Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he plans to review the Child Maintenance Service's practice of allowing a five working days' grace period for non-payment of child maintenance payments.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is required to consider the circumstances of the paying parent when scheduling how and when payments are to be made. By setting payments in line with a paying parent’s preferred payment date and frequency, the paying parent is more likely to make the required payments on time.

Before a payment is considered as ‘late’ or ‘missed’, the CMS allow an additional 5 days for payment to be received (either into CMS or direct to the receiving parent). This timescale is applied as different payment options, for instance direct debit, standing order or cheque, all have set clearance times. These clearance times are set by banks and are outside of CMS control. Clearance times can vary from bank to bank and can be affected by the type of account they are made from or to. Clearance times apply to banking or working days and it would not be right to penalise a paying parent if their usual payment date falls on a bank holiday or weekend as their payment would not be processed by the bank. There is no current plan to change the period before which a payment is considered late, though as banking processes evolve we will keep this under review.