Recommendation 35

The Department has reduced the gross cost of administering child maintenance by £132 million (27%) from £497 million in 2011–12 to £365 million in 2020–21. In real terms, this is equivalent to a £242 million (40%) reduction at 2020–21 prices. This is broadly in line with the 47% fall in caseload over the same period. It reduced its net funding requirement by £172 million (from £494 million to £322 million) across the same period, which is £40 million more than the reduction in gross costs because of the introduction of charging. However, the £322 million funding required (after counting income from fees, charges, and other sources) in 2020–21 remained substantially higher than the Department had expected it to be in that year. The Department forecast in its business cases that it would reduce the cost of administering the scheme to be £234 million in 2013 and £258 million in 2015.81 The Department told us that planned savings have been delayed because its closure of the 1993 and 2003 schemes took longer than expected. The Department has also not achieved the efficiencies it expected in the cost of administering each £1 of maintenance collected and arranged through CMS. It forecast this would improve from 35p per £1 in 2011–12, to 25p per £1 by 2018–19 (before investment costs and income). However, by 2020–21 the cost had risen to 36p per £1 collected and arranged. The Department told us that this was due to the delays in delivering overall cost savings, and because its customer caseload was now more concentrated on the more complex and most difficult cases.82