Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the performance of the Child Maintenance Service.

The CMS has four official Key Performance Indicators (KPI). These are: Application clearances, change of circumstances clearances, Collect and Pay compliance and assessment accuracy. Each KPI has its own standard measure.

Every quarter, the CMS publishes their data on Application clearances, change of circumstances clearances and Collect and Pay compliance.

This information can be found in the latest CMS statistics with the latest data available to March 2025. CMS statistics for June 2025 are due to be released on Tuesday 30th September 2025 at 09:30am.

Information on the accuracy of CMS assessments, which has a standard level of >99%, is published in the annual CMS Client Funds Account, Child maintenance: client funds accounts - GOV.UK.

Since 2020 CMS has shown a consistent level of 99.4% accuracy increasing for the latest year available (2023/24) to 99.5%.

The CMS continues to monitor and review their KPIs to ensure they are the most appropriate measure to drive performance and improve the customer experience.