Potted background to the CSA?
To understand the Agency and how it operates, it is necessary to understand the Agency’s culture. To do that, you need to understand its history.
- Drivers for change:
- Prior to the Child Support Act 1991, maintenance provision was determined by the courts. However, the Conservative government was keen to establish the Child Support Agency (CSA) as a vehicle for lone parents to obtain financial support without the expense or encumbrance of the courts.
- Purpose for change:
- Reducing the burden of paying benefits to Parents with Care (PWC) was a key objective and the Government achieved this by applying a pound for pound benefit cut in every pound paid to the PWC in child maintenance.(a) The Agency’s responsibilities included: –
- Tracing NRPs
- Assessing how much should be paid in maintenance
- Providing a collection service where required
- Enforcing payment if necessary.
- What were the changes?
- What were the results?
- In 1994 the Agency had received more than 1,000 complaints and in July had only raised £15m from NRPs.
- In October 1994, it emerged that at least 40% of maintenance payments ordered by the Agency were wrong.
- In September 1995, the Agency reported a fivefold rise in unpaid maintenance and an audit report into the Agency showed that 71% of all maintenance assessments were incorrect.
- In February 1996, the backlog of unpaid maintenance exceeded £1billion
- In 2001, the Agency was owed more than £1bn in maintenance and had written off two-thirds of this as uncollectable.
- In 2003, the CSA’s new computer and telephone system was launched at a cost of £456m – two years late and £56m over budget.
- It was confirmed by the Agency that 1.2m existing cases could not be transferred onto the new system – CS2 – because the IT “failed to work satisfactorily“.[3]
- In November the DWP admitted that only 4% of the 150,000 PWC applications for payment had received any cash.
- In July 2004 the number of CSA cases yet to be processed had grown to 170,000, with a further 75,000 “lost” in the new computer system. The backlog of new cases was rising by 30,000 every quarter.[4]
- Reducing the burden of paying benefits to Parents with Care (PWC) was a key objective and the Government achieved this by applying a pound for pound benefit cut in every pound paid to the PWC in child maintenance.(a) The Agency’s responsibilities included: –
- What was the remediation?
- In February 2006, the work and pensions secretary John Hutton announced a review to create a new system of child support, replacing the CSA
- The Agency received new powers to check the value of NRP’s assets, while private debt collection agencies pursued long-standing cases.
- In October 2006, the government admitted it that it may have to write off £1bn of the £3.5bn debt owed to parents by their former partners, while another £0.9bn was classified as “probably uncollectible”.
- In June 2007, a bill was published to replace the CSA with CMEC. The new body was given powers to deduct cash direct from bank accounts of NRP’s who refused to pay child maintenance and to confiscate and impose curfews on their passports.
To improve claimant efficiencies, CMEC adopted a narrow formulaic approach based on net income that could be universally applied when considering maintenance awards. However, with so many permutations (e.g. Zero hour contracts; share bonuses; overtime payments; self-employment; unemployment etc.) the calculation of maintenance still remains complex and with this complexity comes interpretation and a greater risk of error.
CMEC also refined the criteria by which the PWC or the NRP could have the maintenance calculation reviewed and amended. The grounds to raise a variation is prescriptive, its purpose to limit the financial considerations impacting the maintenance order calculation. The ACT was also clear that variations could only be made by the PWC or the NRP; to be submitted in writing and within one month from the order being calculated.
In the quarter to March 2014 CMEC received 3,800 complaints, which although a decrease of 1,600 on the same period to March 2013[5] attests to ongoing issues with the way in which CMEC executes its duties.
Culture: The CSA have struggled to meet its operational targets and business objectives despite considerable money and resource being made available. To mitigate, maintenance calculations have been simplified and are calculated on a formulaic basis. CMEC’s operational objective is to assess, notify and set up payment within agreed Service levels. Once calculated, CMEC have been provided increased powers to ensure enforcement for non-payment
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[1] http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/guest_contributions/sue_paper/part_3_%20pre_child%20_support_act_1991.htm
[2] http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/guest_contributions/newcastle_paper/history.htm
[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1438015/CSA-orders-staff-to-cover-up-computer-chaos.html
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/feb/09/childrensservices.politics
[5] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/314581/csa_qtr_summ_stats_mar14.pdf (Page 45)
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Appendix 1
- Jonathan Bradshaw and Christine Skinner (Professor of Social Policy and lecturer in Social Policy University of York respectively) observed in their paper “Child Support: The British Fiasco” FN1 that the remarkable political consensus [to the CSA] had various origins which included a “Perceived decline in family values; a fundament moral view that biological parents should be responsible for their children; a pragmatic concern about the increase in the numbers of lone parents and their dependencies on benefits and a research based assessment that the existing maintenance awards through the courts were low; irregularly paid and seldom reviewed once determined”.
Jill Jagger and Caroline Wright (Changing Family values P121) FN2 noted a causal shift in the perception of family values originated in the political speeches given in 1990 by Margaret Thatcher and Kenneth Baker which focused on lone parents and which created the environment for social change
The impetus for setting up the Child Support Agency was therefore manufactured by a growing swell of public opinion, fuelled by the chord this struck within the press and media and aroused by keynote speeches that included Margaret Thatcher address in July 1990 where she stated “Marriages may break down, but parenthood is for life” continuing “Only one in three children entitled to receive maintenance actually benefit from regular payments”.
David Batty (Timeline: The Child Support Agency crisis – The Guardian) FN3 noted that the CSA was created by “the Conservative government to recoup the cost of paying benefits to nearly 900,000 single parents, mainly mothers, who received little or no maintenance from their former partners”. The Agency’s purpose was to reduce the benefit bill by applying a pound-for-pound benefit cut in every pound paid to the PWC in child maintenance
Dr Susan Jenkins observed that the introduction of the CSA was a “Treasury motivated measure rather than an attempt to alleviate child poverty” which is supported by the address made by Lord Haughton (Hansard 25.02.1991 col 812) in the House of Lords in which he remarked “This bill is not a child support bill it is a taxing bill. I am surprised the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not accepted it as a money bill and included it as a schedule to the finance bill”.
- Durham Legal Services (DLS) commented that CMEC’s “focus is much less about the case itself and much more about enforcing the payment” (FN4).
Source
Taking on Child Support 