National Audit Office publishes report on the Child Maintenance Service

The National Audit Office (NAO) published a report into the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) on 3 March 2022, finding that the service is falling short of delivering the support families need despite government reform¹. The report concluded that there is no way for the government to avoid maintenance arrears rising to £1bn by 2031¹.

The NAO found that the number of families with no child maintenance arrangement in place has almost doubled since the CMS was established, and that the number of families in the UK with successful child maintenance arrangements has not increased despite improvements and reduced costs¹. The report also uncovered delays in enforcement, with many paying parents leaving enforcement owing more than they did when the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) started action against them¹.

Gingerbread, the national charity for single parent families, said the NAO's findings showed the CMS was failing to reach families it should be protecting. Its chief executive, Victoria Benson, said:

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: "Many separated parents are still left without the maintenance payments they are due. Welfare and child maintenance rules need to align much better to support government's wider objectives of addressing poverty and helping people into work."²

Gingerbread said 60% of new applicants to the service in September 2021 were recognised as survivors of domestic abuse, and that the increasing complexity of the 1 in 5 separated families who use the CMS was a factor¹. The charity also said the NAO had found the government had not learnt a key lesson from the now-defunct Child Support Agency (CSA) in preventing arrears building up, and warned that single parents risk being left "high and dry" if hundreds of millions of pounds of arrears they are owed are written off, as they were when the CSA closed¹.

Why it matters for households

The CMS handles child maintenance for around 1 in 5 separated families¹. The report's findings affect parents who use the service to arrange or receive payments, and the children in those families. The NAO found that families with no arrangement in place have almost doubled since the CMS was established, and that this is affecting children in some of the poorest families and families with higher levels of conflict¹. Arrears owed to parents are projected to reach £1bn by 2031, and the NAO found no way for the government to avoid this without writing debts off¹. The report also found that enforcement action can leave paying parents owing more than when the DWP started action against them¹. Gingerbread said single parents and their children rely on maintenance payments for income, and that this is increasingly vital given the cost of living squeeze facing single parent families¹.

What happens next

The NAO recommended a legislative review of the CMS, including for the DWP to be more focused on understanding and differentiating customers and ensuring that maintenance promised to parents with care has a realistic prospect of being paid¹. Gingerbread said it welcomed this recommendation, and called for the DWP to improve its data collection and transparency, and for the government to undertake a holistic review of the income support offered to single parents as part of any further reform¹. No timetable for legislative change has been reported¹.

For more on how child maintenance arrangements work, see Child Maintenance: Arrangements and the Child Maintenance Service. Related information on benefits and other life events is also available.