Independent Case Examiner

6. Ms A complains that, since January 2020, CMS has failed to act on the information available to it to secure accurate and consistent child maintenance payments from the Non-Resident Parent (NRP).

7. She also complains it failed to promptly act on her request to change the payment type to Collect and Pay (C&P). She complains it also delayed in taking enforcement action to ensure she received maintenance payments.

8. Ms A tells us that this has resulted in frustration and severe financial and emotional distress.

9. Ms A would like CMS to act on the information in its possession and carry out enforcement to retrieve the monies owed and ongoing maintenance payments.

10. Ms A made an application for child maintenance in June 2020. Over the next four and a half years she provided CMS with financial and other information about the non-resident parent (NRP – the parent who is not providing daily care for the child or children but is the person with the responsibility to pay child maintenance). She requested that CMS take action to enforce its child maintenance decisions as the NRP was not complying with them.

11. In early April 2023 Ms A complained to CMS. When she did not receive a response, she contacted her MP in late April 2023 who raised a complaint on her behalf in May 2023. CMS responded shortly after and explained it was restricted in the actions it could take. It referred Ms A to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) if she was dissatisfied with the response. She brought her complaint to the ICE who provided a decision in November 2024, upholding her complaint and making recommendations to the CMS.

12. Ms A brought her complaint to our Office in December 2024.

15. Ms A says that CMS failed to act on information she gave it regarding the NRP’s income. She also complains it delayed in changing the payment type and did not take enforcement action ensure she received child maintenance payments including the arrears that had accrued.

16. CMS says it considered the information provided to it by Ms A and took what steps it could to act on it. It accepts the ICE findings that it had missed several opportunities to make changes to the payment type.

17. Our Service Model Guidance says:

A complainant bringing a complaint to us should usually have given the organisation responsible an opportunity to formally respond and resolve their complaint before we would consider it.

18. Ms A has not specifically complained to the ICE about a ‘failure’ to act on information or take enforcement action. We note the ICE’s investigation was broad (it looked at whether CMS failed to secure payments since 2020) and its findings centred on the delay in changing the payment type. Within its report, it touched on all the issues Ms A brought to us, but there is not a specific view on the information and enforcement parts. For this reason, we have not looked at these in detail and have centred our view on the delays to the payment type.

19. We considered whether it would be appropriate for Ms A to go back to the ICE for it to consider these points. We felt it would be better for us to give a broad view and, considering the resolution we achieved (more at the end of our report), feel CMS has now done all it can to put this right.

20. We can see that it has looked at the events surrounding the referral to the Financial Investigation Unit (FIU), so we have looked at that this.

21. In August 2020, Ms A told CMS that the NRP had more income than he had been assessed as having. She asked it to consider changing the amount he paid in child maintenance (this is called ‘requesting a variation’). CMS wrote to the NRP in December 2020, explained what Ms A had said, and gave him the opportunity to provide any information he might have in response.

22. In February 2021 CMS wrote to Ms A and said her request for a variation had been successful and recalculated the amount of child maintenance she should expect. Ms A replied to say that the amount of income in the new calculation was still wrong and significantly less than the NRP earned. She provided CMS with official documents from an ongoing court case that supported her statement.

23. CMS referred the case to its Financial Investigation Unit (FIU) that same day.

24. Section 96045/6 of the CMS DMG explains:

The Financial Investigation Unit’s (FIU) role is to investigate allegations of Fraud and Financial Inaccuracies that impact the amount of child maintenance due to be paid/collected.

Referrals to the FIU can be made at any point in the lifespan of the child maintenance case.

25. Section 96047 of the CMS DMG gives examples of what the FIU can investigate. Two listed are:

• Allegations that the paying parent is a complex earner and has failed to report their true level of income.

• Challenges to the income used by CMS from HMRC, not being reflective of the NRP’s true earnings. Including instances when a variation for unearned or diversion of income has been completed but the outcome is subsequently challenged.

26. We find CMS acted in line with the guidance when it referred Mrs A’s concerns to the FIU after she reported the NRP was hiding his income and not reporting it accurately. This means there are no indications anything went seriously wrong and we will not take any further action on this part of the complaint.

27. CMS has a very limited scope for taking enforcement action when the method of payment is direct pay. We reviewed the evidence and did not see any occasion where CMS could have initiated enforcement action but failed to do so. Ms A told us that events following her complaint to CMS and when she was receiving payments through C&P did provide those opportunities. While we cannot consider them as part of this complaint, we have explained to Ms A that she can bring those matters to CMS in a new complaint.

28. We understand that this will be upsetting for Ms A to read, and we are sorry for the distress this will cause, particularly as she tells us that she remains very upset and angry at CMS for not doing more.

Delay in changing payment type

29. Ms A complains that CMS took over a year to process her request to change the payment type to collect and pay

30. CMS accepted the ICE findings that it had missed several opportunities to make the change.

31. At the beginning of March 2021, Ms A reported that she was not receiving the full amount from the NRP and explained that her situation prevented her from contacting him to find out why. She asked CMS if the case should be moved from Direct Pay, where the NRP pays the Parent With Care (PWC) directly, to Collect and Pay (C&P) where CMS handle the collection of child maintenance.

32. CMS contacted the NRP who disputed the income figure being used by CMS to calculate his child maintenance liability. Later in March 2021, Ms A again asked about a change to C&P and CMS contacted the NRP to tell him he had 14 days to provide evidence that payments had been made, or the case would change to C&P. At this point, the arrears balance was £3,019.59.

33. Ms A contacted CMS again at the end of March 2021 to say the NRP had only been paying £23 per week, and she wanted to change the service type to C&P. In early April 2021, CMS wrote to Ms A and said that it would submit a request for the service change, but it could take up to ten weeks for it to be actioned.

34. In late April 2021 CMS rejected the request to change to C&P based on a reported change from the NRP which CMS were looking into. Ms A wrote again in June 2021 to say that she was still only receiving £23 per week, and CMS explained that while it was carrying out investigations the maintenance calculation could not be increased. This referred to information given by the NRP and not the FIU investigation.

35. The ICE found, however that CMS should have taken account of section 100003 of the Guidance which says:

The DM should gather evidence from the PWC of any missed, short, or late payments from the NRP and where relevant, should include details of the NRP’s behaviour in relation to making payments, for example has the NRP held on to payments in an attempt to exert some control over the PWC.

36. The evidence shows there was a history of not making the scheduled payments and this should have been taken account of in line with the above guidance. It was not and this is an indication of maladministration on the part of CMS, and we will consider the impact later in this document.

37. Ms A continued to ask CMS what was happening on her case and why she could not receive some interim payments from the NRP to make up some of the shortfall until the investigation was complete. She was told enquiries were ongoing.

38. After receiving the annual review statement near the end of June 2021, Ms A contacted CMS again to tell it that the income figure was still wrong and that scheduled payments were still not being met. CMS wrote to explain that an ongoing investigation was taking place, and no changes could be made at this point in time. As we previously identified, CMS should have taken account of the short payments in deciding whether the change could be made and this is a repeat of that indication of maladministration.

39. In September 2022 Ms A contacted CMS and again requested a change to C&P. The NRP submitted a dispute in relation to shared care of the children, and this meant an MR was raised. CMS told Ms A that this meant that the C&P request could not be considered until an outstanding Mandatory Reconsideration (MR – when a person challenges a maintenance calculation) was complete. The MR was declined in mid-October 2022.

40. As we said earlier, the application of the Guidance (100003) could have resulted in C&P being put in place on the basis of a poor payment history. This is an indication of maladministration on the part of CMS, and we will consider the impact later in this document

41. In early October 2022, Ms A spoke with CMS and asked if enforcement action would be taken against the NRP now that the FIU had found in her favour. CMS told her that it had taken action to backdate the payments on the new information and that if the case was transferred to C&P then action may be taken in the future if the NRP did not make the payments he was scheduled to make.

42. Shortly after, Ms A called CMS to confirm that the service would now be changed to C&P. CMS wrote to the NRP to advise this change would take place in mid-November 2022 unless he provided evidence to show why it should not. None was provided but the change did not take place.

43. Ms A complained to CMS in mid-November 2022 that despite the FIU findings and her multiple requests for a change in service, she had not been receiving the correct amounts of child maintenance since the case was raised.

44. CMS told us that there was ‘an ongoing special expense variation from the NRP in place in October 2022 and so it could not process the change to C&P at that time. The variation was completed in early December 2022, which then allowed the business to process the change the service type, which was then completed in mid-December 2022’.

45. As we said previously, the application of the Guidance (100003) could have resulted in C&P being put in place on the basis of a poor payment history. This is an indication of maladministration on the part of CMS, and we will consider the impact below.

Impact and Remedy

46. When we identify indications that something went wrong, we see whether there is an impact to the complainant, and whether the organisation has done anything to put that right.

47. Ms A told us that she experienced frustration and distress when trying to get CMS to change to the Collect and Pay service which she hoped would get her the child maintenance monies she was due.

48. We have seen that CMS did not follow its guidance on three occasions when it failed to consider implementing a change of service type to C&P.

49. We recognise that poor service and delays is frustrating for complainants. We see there was a significant delay in CMS changing the payment type and can understand why Ms A would be frustrated by this.

50. We note Ms A made the first change request in March 2021 and received a response in April 2021. Ms A made the second request in June 2021 and received a response around the same time. The third request was made in September 2022, some 16 months later. The change was made in December 2022. Based on this, we see Ms A would have experienced around five months of frustration at either receiving a negative response or waiting for the change to happen.

51. We appreciate that, in this time, Ms A would likely have many factors in her life, and these would likely have impacted on her to some extent. While we cannot say the delay caused a further 16 months of frustration, we recognise Ms A’s frustration would not be limited to the five months outlined above. On balance, it is likely her frustration would be somewhere between six to twelve months. We are sorry to see this, and we recognise this must have been difficult for her.

52. We cannot know what impact that would have had on the monies Ms A would have received, given the NRP was challenging the calculations and thereby action was unlikely to be taken (as we show in a separate heading). We can also see from the evidence that any missed/reduced payments based on the CMS calculations were calculated by CMS and added to the arrears. We acknowledge that an accumulation of arrears was not want Ms A was hoping would happen but rather CMS would take action to get them sooner.

53. As we have seen an emotional impact to Ms A, we have looked to see whether CMS has done enough to put this right. We note the ICE recommended CMS pay Ms A £175 for the emotional and financial stress on her.

54. We have looked to see whether this is enough to put this right. We use our Severity of Injustice (SOI) scale to decide this as it helps provide consistency across complaints. We find Ms A’s injustice fits with Level Three on the SOI. Level Three of the SOI says:

The injustice would have a moderate impact (for example, in terms of distress, worry, inconvenience) but has lasted for significant period, between six and twelve months. Once the situation has ceased, the person affected would be expected to recover quickly. Payments at this level would be between £600 and £1,200.

55. We have seen that Ms A experienced frustration for around six to twelve months. For this reason, we found £175 is not be enough to put this right for Ms A.

56. We discussed our findings with CMS and asked it to revisit Ms A’s case to consider whether the impacts she told CMS she experienced were consistent with cases where it had paid a higher remedy. We explained that in our view, the impact was one that fit with a Level Three on our SOI, and we explained to CMS how we came to that view.

57. CMS agreed that the impact had not been addressed and agreed with our request to increase the remedy by an additional £500, bringing it in line with those other cases.

58. We do acknowledge the impacts Ms A experienced when she was not receiving the service from CMS she was entitled to. We are sorry to hear it was and continues to be a source of distress and worry. We hope our report provides clarity for Ms A.

59. We recognise Ms A may still feel more can be done and we understand this has been a very difficult period for her. Based on what has now been done, we think CMS has now done enough to put right the impact she experienced, and we will take no further action.

1. We have carefully considered Ms A’s complaint about the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) and Independent Case Examiner (ICE).

2. We are sorry to hear of the difficulties she experienced in relation to CMS’s administration of her child maintenance case. We appreciate these events have left her feeling distressed, frustrated and struggling financially.

3. We have considered the evidence available to us and found that CMS made several errors that impacted Ms A. It did not consider implementing a change of service type based on existing guidance that said it should. It also took 19 months and three requests from Ms A for it to make the change.

4. We did not find evidence that CMS failed to act on information Ms A provided it in respect of the Financial Investigation Unit (FIU) investigation. We have also not seen any evidence that CMS failed to take enforcement action.

5. We found that CMS acted in line with the recommendation from the ICE to pay a £175 remedy to Ms A and provide an apology for the poor service. However, it also agreed with our Office that, when comparing the remedy to similar cases it had investigated, it did not adequately address the impact of its errors on Ms A. It has now increased the financial remedy by £500 to bring it in line with those similar cases. This is in line with its guidance on putting things right and means we will take no further action on this part of the complaint.