Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the Child Maintenance Service's arrears department is (i) office based and (ii) staffed through home working; how many people work for that team; what their response time is; and whether that response time is in line with their service level agreement.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) arrears department operates using a combination of office‑based and hybrid working arrangements. CMS currently offers the opportunity to work a minimum of 60% of time in the office with 40% at home, although staff can choose to work more time in the office if they wish. Some choose to work in the office full time. The only exceptions to this are individual requirements as part of a reasonable adjustment. Hybrid working is not a contractual right and is therefore subject to change. There are currently 771 employees working in the arrears team.

CMS monitors the performance of the arrears function. Caseworker response times remain consistent across both office‑based and home‑working arrangements and continue to operate fully within the Service Level Agreement for the arrears function.