Children: Maintenance

(asked on 21st June 2019) - View Source
Questioner
Marion Fellows Portrait
Marion Fellows
(Scottish National Party - Motherwell and Wishaw)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Child Maintenance Service cases were in payment arrears for each quarter of the last three years.

Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 26th June 2019

The following table shows the number of Paying Parents who had outstanding unpaid child maintenance (which now needs to be collected through the Collect & Pay service) at the end of the relevant month.

Month

Paying Parents with CMS arrears

Sep-17

105,900

Dec-17

117,100

Mar-18

126,800

Jun-18

136,400

Sep-18

143,800

Nov-18*

148,200

Please note the following points:

  • A Paying Parent may be paying towards multiple child maintenance arrangements;
  • These figures do not consider unpaid child maintenance that was arranged by the Child Support Agency;
  • Paying Parents with any amount of unpaid maintenance which was arranged by the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) are considered as having arrears;
  • Figures have been rounded to the nearest 100.

Information prior to September 2017 is not readily available and to produce it would incur disproportionate cost.

*Information for December 2018 is not readily available; November 2018 figures have been used instead.

Reticulating Splines