Recommendation 23

We asked the Department why it was taking so long to identify missed payments and transfer customers onto Collect & Pay.47 The Department informs parents that they should get in touch if their Direct Pay arrangement fails but some do not, for example because they are concerned about causing an issue with the other parent. The Department does not monitor whether payments are made, but does send reminders to the receiving parent, three months after they start (by text) and at each annual review, to prompt them to contact the Department if their Direct Pay arrangement is not working. Meanwhile, however, unpaid maintenance arrears can build up. On average, paying parents moving onto Collect & Pay from Direct Pay in the quarter ending September 2021 owed £1,100, around five months’ worth of maintenance.48 The Department accepted that it needed to go further to identify non-paying Direct Pay cases, and told us that its digital transformation programme should allow it to spot cases more quickly. The Department told us that its new online system made it easier for parents to report that they had not received a payment, and that digitalisation would also provide more opportunities to transform its processes; for example, it can increase the use of its My Child Maintenance account to nudge parents on Direct Pay to report non-payment.49