Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 6
6
Accepted
The Department is too slow to take effective enforcement action, leaving children without maintenance for...
Recommendation
The Department is too slow to take effective enforcement action, leaving children without maintenance for too long and allowing child maintenance arrears to grow. The Department designed its CMS scheme to encourage parents to use Direct Pay first, and the supporting legislation forces some receiving parents onto Direct Pay even when they assert correctly that their ex-partner will not pay. It is therefore no surprise that around half of new Direct Pay arrangements are either not sustained or are not effective, allowing unpaid maintenance debts to build to an average of £1,100 before the parents eventually move onto Collect & Pay. The Department accepts that it needs to go further to identify non-paying Direct Pay cases more quickly. The Department has improved compliance rates on Collect & Pay but around half of paying parents still paid less maintenance than was due in the quarter ending September 2021. Where paying parents continue to be non- compliant, the Department is slow to advance cases onto civil enforcement action. The Department told us it wants to speed up its enforcement processes but is restricted in how it can pursue unpaid maintenance, as many of the enforcement steps are defined by legislation and require action by external bodies, such as the courts. As a result, it can take years before payments are made to receiving parents whilst arrears continue to build. In addition, some paying parents simply cannot afford maintenance payments, meaning enforcement is unlikely to result in any more maintenance actually being paid. The amount of money owed by paying parents is forecast to reach £1 billion by March 2031, and, without legislative change is at risk of growing indefinitely. Child Maintenance 9 Recommendation: The Department should, within one year: • conduct operational and user research to better understand how customers progress through its collection and enforcement process, to identify any operational or legislative barriers to reducing the ove
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the recommendation to conduct research to understand how customers progress through the collection and enforcement process and is already completing insight and analysis and utilising existing user research. It is reviewing its internal processes and current organisational design structure to ensure cases can be transitioned through the customer journey more efficiently.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented The department continues to complete extensive operational insight and analysis and utilises its existing user research. This provides insight into any barriers to compliance enabling the department to identify further opportunities for improvements for customers. As reported by the National Audit Office, the department has improved its collection and enforcement activities and the amount it collects through Collect & Pay enforcing payments has increased. The department recognises the challenges it faces in removing some of the barriers to compliance and therefore continually reviews and evolves its compliance strategy. Through its Transformation Programme the department will be developing its use of risk and intelligence within its business processes. This will involve improving the quality and the use of data to develop and deploy both tactical solutions for improving and accelerating day to day compliance and in helping to inform and develop a more efficient organisational and process design. This will link closely with embedding sustainable arrangements that take a balanced account of the customer’s circumstances. The department is aware that the effectiveness of its compliance strategy is heavily influenced by existing legal processes and the current dependency on third parties (such as MoJ and Bailiffs). It is currently reviewing these dependencies and will provide an implementation approach for any changes by Summer 2023. Through its Transformation Programme, the department is reviewing its internal processes and current organisational design structure to ensure cases can be transitioned through the customer journey more efficiently. In addition, current policy work relating to ‘Transformation’ includes the drafting of regulations to extinguish low level debt (where appropriate) and expanding the list of organisations required to comply with requests from CMS for information or evidence. of HMT guidance, Parliamentary scrutiny of public spending, the department cannot set out its plans to review the affordability of liabilities in its response to the Committee as this relies upon a policy decision. 7.3 However, the department is considering its plans to review the affordability of Child Maintenance Payments and will update the Work and Pensions Committee in due course.