5. Mr B complains the CMS refused to consider his 2022 late appeal against its 2018 decision, despite the delay being the result of his poor health.
6. Mr B also complains the CMS took over five years to deal with his complaint and it did not respond fully.
7. He says the CMS’s actions caused his health to be negatively affected both physically and mentally.
8. Mr B wants the CMS to recalculate its decision based on the information his wife has supplied.
9. Mr B has a child with a previous partner. The child does not live with him and he was required to pay maintenance to the child’s mother to help care for them.
10. Although Mr B’s requirement for maintenance payments ended in November 2019 when the child reached 20 years of age, his complaint relates to the CMS’s collection of arrears (unpaid maintenance) from before this time.
11. Mr B wrote to the CMS on 25 November 2019 to appeal an alleged debt on the account. His wife wrote a letter two days later. This included an explanation that the benefits Mr B claimed in his name were paid directly to her.
12. Mrs B’s wife sent the same letter to the CMS again on 25 September 2020. Mr B followed this with a letter two days later, which also repeated the content of his wife’s correspondence.
13. On 25 March 2022, Mr B wrote to the CMS and asked it to reconsider its decision from 26 March 2018.
14. The CMS explained Mr B was too late to appeal its decision. It also told Mr B’s MP and the Citizens Advice Bureau this when they approached it on his behalf.
15. Mr B referred the matter to the Independent Complaints Examiner (ICE). It would not consider his complaint because it related to legislation the CMS had used. It repeated this a further two times after Mr B contacted it to complain about its decision.
Late appeal
18. Before we decide if we should investigate a complaint in more detail, we look at whether there are signs the organisation got something wrong. We do this by comparing what should have happened with what did happen. We have done this and have not seen any signs that the CMS did something wrong.
19. Mr B says he wrote to the CMS on 25 March 2022 to ask it to review its decision of 26 March 2018. The evidence shows he wrote to it with his appeal request on 25 November 2019. He then appealed again on 27 September 2020 and 25 March 2022.
20. The CMS declined to consider Mr B’s appeal requests because the opportunity to appeal had passed.
21. Sometimes the CMS incorrectly calculates a parent’s liability. This can happen when it has not considered a relevant piece of employment evidence, or evidence related to which parent has been housing the child, for example. There is an established appeal route available to dispute child maintenance calculations.
22. When a parent considers the CMS got their liability wrong, they should ask it to do a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR). This gives the CMS the opportunity to revisit the evidence and make a fresh decision on the outstanding liability. If the parent is still unhappy, they can then appeal at a First-Tier Tribunal, where a judge will consider relevant evidence and make a ruling.
23. Child Support Maintenance Calculation Regulations Part 3, Chapter 2, Regulation 14 explains the timescale to appeal a calculation is 30 days. Regulation 15 goes on to explain the time limit may be extended providing the following is demonstrated:
‘(a) it is reasonable to grant the application; (b) the application for revision has merit; and (c) special circumstances are relevant to the application and because of those special circumstances it was not practicable for the application to be made within the time limit specified in regulation 14(1)(a).’
24. Mr B explains he was experiencing poor health at the time of the March 2018 decision. He says he told the CMS this was the reason for his delayed contact with it, but we have not seen any evidence of this. While his correspondence refers to him being unwell, this is in the context of him claiming the CMS’s actions caused his ill health, rather than it being an explanation of why he did not query its calculations sooner.
25. Having reviewed the information provided, we can see the calculation Mr B disputes is for arrears. For the combined period of February 2005 to March 2016, Mr B was required to pay £10,875.29 for his child. This represents weekly payments of between £4.14 and £38 depending on the information the CMS held about his income at different points throughout this time.
26. Mr B paid £1,504, leaving a balance of £9,246.29 on May 2021.
27. The decision that Mr B refers to was not made in March 2018 as he says. The CMS contacted him in March 2016 to confirm there was a balance owed on his account, but this is not the date of the decision.
28. The CMS made calculations at least once every year from 2005 to 2016. It sent each of these to Mr B and explained what he should do if he did not agree with these. As explained, he had 30 days each time to request MR, which was his legal right. There were at least 12 opportunities for him to do this.
29. Mr B has kindly provided us with his medical records to support his health being too poor to appeal sooner. While we recognise he has experienced some episodes of physical and mental ill health, we do not consider an appeal made, at the very least, three and a half years outside the legally provided time limit, to be reasonable. We can see Mr B has been in contact with the CMS during this period. He was aware of the arrears on his account given the correspondence the CMS issued and the action it took to try to recover this. This included Mr B attending a court hearing about the matter.
30. The CMS did not act incorrectly when it declined to accept Mr B’s late appeal. He had a legal route through which he could have challenged the CMS’s calculations at the time they were made. We do not consider the CMS declining to act outside of this set process to be wrong. Mr B also did not explain to the CMS he had been unable to appeal sooner because of poor health. We cannot expect it to have taken this into account.
Delayed response to complaint
31. Mr B complains the CMS took five years to respond to his complaint. He believes that if the CMS had acted on his complaint sooner, his appeal would not have been late. The evidence shows this was not the case.
32. Our ‘Principles of Good Complaint Handling’ say organisations should act in line with the law and relevant guidance, and give honest, evidence-based explanations and reasons for their decisions.
33. It is important to clarify at this point that Mr B’s complaint and appeal are effectively the same thing. He complained to the CMS and asked it to review its calculations within the same correspondence.
34. Mr B has provided us with letters he wrote to the CMS on 25 November 2019 and 25 and 27 September 2020. These all provide the same information, which is Mr B’s reason for wanting to appeal previous calculations. His wife also wrote to the CMS with the same information on 27 November 2019.
35. We have not seen that there was any appeal before November 2019, as we have explained above. Although Mr B also provided us with receipts to show he posted something to the CMS on 10 and 20 June 2016, there is no sign of this being an appeal request. We are also aware that, if this was such an appeal, it would have been late because the closest decision at that time was made in March 2016, three months before (and two months outside the time limit for appeal).
36. The CMS told Mr B it would not accept his appeal and explained why. Mr B was understandably unhappy with this, and continued to communicate with the CMS to complain until 2022. We acknowledge this meant the matter has been ongoing for a number of years. We do not consider this to be because of a failing by the CMS. It acted in line with our Principles when it told Mr B why it would not consider his appeal. It seems the further contact between the CMS and Mr B after this time was because Mr B did not accept the decision. We are sorry that Mr B is still unhappy about the CMS’s decision and we hope he is assured we have considered his complaint carefully.
1. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has carefully considered Mr B’s complaint about the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). We are sorry to hear about how Mr B says he has been affected by what happened.
2. We have seen no sign that the CMS did anything wrong when it declined to accept Mr B’s late appeals of its calculations. Mr B had several opportunities over a long period of time to challenge the CMS about how much maintenance he needed to pay to his ex-partner.
3. We did not see that Mr B had given the CMS a clear reason for his lack of appeal within the time limit set out in law. We do not agree that the CMS failed to consider this.
4. We did not see any sign that the CMS did not respond to Mr B’s complaint in good time.