Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of disputes involving the Child Maintenance Service on the backlog of cases in the family courts; and what steps she is taking to reduce the time taken to resolve those disputes.

Should a Child Maintenance (CM) claimant dispute a decision made by DWP, they can request a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) to review the decision made. Subsequently, if they are still dissatisfied with the decision, they can appeal to His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). Once DWP are notified of the appeal, the Department has 42 days to prepare their appeal response or lapse the appeal if we can improve the decision.

To reduce the time taken to resolve Child Maintenance Service (CMS) disputes that have reached Appeal stage, the disputes service has taken the following actions:

• Recruited an additional team of CMS Appeal Writers in January 2025.
• Working to identify continuous improvement activity to improve the customer journey and reduce wait times.
• Utilising overtime to increase clearance volumes.
• Supporting a two-way data sharing agreement with HMCTS to identify pre-registration Appeal volumes.