Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on how many occasions where a parent does not make payments in full and on time has the Child Maintenance Service sought to (a) make a deduction order to take either a lump sum or regular deductions from the paying parent’s bank or building society account, (b) make a liability order, (c) instruct an enforcement agency to recover and auction goods, (d) place a charge on the property and (e) instigate court action, in each of the years since it was established and given those powers.

The Department publishes quarterly Child Maintenance Service statistics, with the latest statistics available to the end of December 2020, here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-statistics-data-to-december-2020-experimental

The number of Deduction Orders, by quarter, can be found in “Table 7.1: Enforcement Actions” of the National Tables. This table also gives the number of Liability Orders and Enforcement Agency referrals for England and Wales.

The number of Applications to court to apply a sanction, by quarter, can be found in “Table 7.2: Enforcement Actions - Detail on Sanctions” of the National Tables.

Table 1 below gives the number of charging orders (placing a charge on a property) in England and Wales, and Inhibitions (preventing the Paying Parent from selling, transferring or disposing of 'heritable assets' including land and property) in Scotland, made between September 2017 and December 2020.

Table 1: The number of Charging Orders in England and Wales and Inhibitions in Scotland, applications made by the Child Maintenance Service, by quarter between September 2017 and December 2020.

Source: Child Maintenance Service Administrative Data

Notes:

1. All figures are rounded to the nearest 10. ' -’ denotes nil or numbers that round to zero. Totals may not sum due to rounding.
2. The figures supplied are derived from unpublished information and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.