Seven out of ten clients of CSA replacement the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) currently pay their liabilities, the government has announced.
In a newly published set of provisional statistics outlining the current status of the CMS, the Department for Work and Pensions stressed the growth of the organisation since August 2013. Close to eighty-five per cent of all phone calls received by the service are answered within 30 seconds, the government claims, and 94 per cent of liability calculations are correct to within just £1 or 2 per cent of the sums actually due. However, the latter figure represents a drop from the 96 per cent accuracy achieved in February.
The CMS introduced collection fees for both the paying and receiving parent last year. Since the organisation’s workload has increased, the statistics suggest: its individual caseload reached 130,200 in May, a jump of as much as 19 per cent since February.
The overall number of complaints received represented 0.14 per cent of the current CMS caseload.
The statistics can be read here.
My understanding was that the new child maintenance service is designed to help parents work together, rather than involve the Agency. I am puzzled therefore that their workload has gone up with the introduction of collection fees, rather than gone down.
If government wants more parents to stay together then they shouldn’t come down in favour of single parenthood as this organisation does. Maintenance should be paid by the government or related to conduct, this agency encourages couples to split and that is very badly wrong.
Agency , service, commission. Same wolf in same clothing but with different name and over simplistic bad thinking behind it making splitting an option where before the csa it wasn’t for many, badly wrong that.
Yvie, the CSA wants us to believe that it is designed to help parents work together, but it is actually the direct opposite. The changes that were made were solely to do with giving the CSA more direct power over enforcement, the kind of power that enables financial abuse and the violation of human rights (which in future will be even less subject to scrutiny). The problem with this country is that it has a class system and right at the top you have the worst liars and thieves, and that when those less wealthy object to being ruled by these feudal lords or seek to protect their financial means, they get kicked in the stomach, even while they are already down.
I think you make a good point when you say the Government have taken our women away from us. I think they have also. So, where do we go from here? I thonk its fairer for the Government to get lost and put less and less money into this department and family law and leave people to sort their own affairs out rather than intervening and making matters worse. Same wrt lawyers. If they are worried about people on the streets, then they need to look out of their windows. I do agree it is oppresion. If women dont like the man or cant afford the baby they should stop themselves getting pregnant. In my not inconsiderable experience men don’t leave wife and children with nothing very often at all. Indeed I cant think of one man like that. It is evil oppression via broad brush tarring all as bad and I hate them for it and if I lived in Scotland I would have boted to leave the UK and advised my children the same for that very reason.