Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 30
30
In 2011, the Department announced that it would close the old Child Support Agency (CSA)...
Conclusion
In 2011, the Department announced that it would close the old Child Support Agency (CSA) schemes and introduce the CMS. It decided, based on its analysis, that it would not be value for money to attempt to collect all the unpaid maintenance debt on the CSA schemes. The Department reduced the historic CSA debt relating to unpaid maintenance by £2.6 billion between December 2018 and March 2021 after deciding to largely write it off.64 Gingerbread, in its written evidence to us, told that it regularly heard from “single parents who were outraged at having debts written off, where the amount owed represented a lifetime of struggling with household budgeting” and that they had heard from resident parents who were owed more than £100,000.65
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
6. PAC conclusion: The Department is too slow to take effective enforcement action, leaving children without maintenance for too long and allowing child maintenance arrears to grow. 6. PAC 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 overall time to getting payments; and • in consultation with stakeholders, develop a strategy to tackle rising unpaid maintenance debt on its 2012 scheme, drawing on lessons learned from its experience of reducing CSA arrears, considering key barriers to compliance, such as affordability, and whether a write-off of uncollectable debt would be appropriate. 6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 6.2 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. 6.3 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. 6.4 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. 6.5 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. 6.6 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. 6.7 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.