Child Maintenance Service (CMS)

4. Mr A complains that CMS has not properly compensated him for not telling him until August 2019 that his maintenance case closed in August 2018.

5. He says he continued to make payments unnecessarily and this left him financially disadvantaged during a time when he was also struggling with his health. He says this added financial pressure caused worry, distress and anxiety to bring in money at a time when he should have been focussing on his recovery. He adds this was made worse by the time and effort he has spent to try and resolve things.

6. He wants a financial payment.

7. Mr A had a child maintenance case set up as Direct Pay, meaning payments were not collected by CMS but paid straight to the parent with care.

8. On 7 August 2018, the child’s mother contacted CMS to say the child no longer lived with her full-time and she was no longer getting child benefit.

9. After this, CMS sent Mr A his annual review asking him to pay £473.96 per month from the end of September. This review did not include the information it had been given a few weeks before.

10. CMS’s records show that it confirmed the child was no longer under the mother’s care as of 13 August. Mr A tells us he contacted CMS and was told to continue paying. As CMS has deleted his records, we have no evidence from it about this contact.

11. In March 2019, CMS started the process to close Mr A’s case and this was not completed until August, 12 months after it knew the child was no longer living with their mother.

12. During this time, Mr A continued to make payments totalling £4,442.57.

13. Mr A began the complaints process in August and submitted a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR is when you challenge a decision and ask for it to be looked at again) in September. Mr A’s MP became involved shortly after this. At this time, Mr A also says he asked CMS if he needed to keep paying child maintenance and he was told to keep paying. Unfortunately, the records for this period are not available so we cannot confirm this, but it seems that Mr A did ask about that.

14. CMS replied and accepted fault for the delay in telling him his case was closed and said it could not pay compensation due to legislative restrictions.

15. In January 2020, CMS rejected the MR and Mr A appealed to the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal.

16. The Tribunal heard Mr A’s case in April 2021. Although it did not have authority to decide on this specific matter, the judge said that CMS should give the matter ‘urgent attention’ and reconsider reimbursing him the money he paid unnecessarily. CMS declined to do so.

17. In August, CMS sent its final complaint response repeating that reimbursement was not appropriate. It offered to pay him £150 for deleting his case records early but did not offer a payment for the delay.

18. Mr A complained to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) who upheld his complaint that there was a delay and recommended CMS reconsider reimbursing him and pay a further £150 consolatory offer for the delay. The report stated that CMS had agreed to complete this action by 13 July 2023.

19. When Mr A complained to us, CMS had not completed ICE’s recommendations. But, it has since confirmed that it paid him £4,625.05 in September 2023.

CMS’s consolatory payment

22. CMS relies on the Guide when deciding on compensation. ICE also uses this as a starting point for any financial recommendations it looks to make.

23. Section five of the Guide sets out the three special payment categories under which it can award financial redress, these are the ex-gratia (good will) special payment categories. Category three specifically relates to consolatory payments and clarifies that payments usually fall between £25 and £500. It explains there is scope for lower or higher offers depending on the individual circumstances of the case.

24. Our Complaint Standards state that where something has been found to have gone wrong, the organisation should check what impact that may have had. Then the organisation should take action to put things right for the service user. Where that is not possible, we expect the organisation to consider what other action can be taken to put right the impact of its failing(s).

25. CMS accepted ICE’s decision that it delayed telling him that his maintenance case had closed. It reimbursed Mr A the money he overpaid, so there is no need for us to consider this part.

26. Our investigation focuses on whether the consolatory offers (payment) it made are appropriate to put right the impact the delay had on Mr A.

27. CMS has paid Mr A £300 in total. But, one of these payments was for deleting his case records too soon which is not relevant to this complaint. This means we can exclude this part from our investigation. The other consolatory offer was recommended by ICE ‘for failing to close [his] case and inform [him] of this in a reasonable timescale’. That is what we are focusing on because Mr A complains that £150 does not reflect the negative effect this matter had on him.

28. The ICE report does not include any consideration of impact. It only gives a decision on what failings it found and what it believes CMS should pay Mr A for those failings. It is not possible to say exactly what impact ICE took it into account when reaching the figure of £150, other than by looking at the failing and CMS’s guidance. We have reviewed the available evidence and guidance to decide whether the consolatory offer of £150 was appropriate to put the impact right.

The impact Mr A experienced

29. Mr A told us that CMS’s actions meant he continued to make payments unnecessarily for 12 months and this left him financially disadvantaged at a time when he was also struggling with his health. He says this added financial pressure caused him worry, distress and anxiety to bring in money at a time when he should have been focussing on his recovery. He adds this was made worse by the time and effort he spent to try and resolve the matter.

30. There seems to be no dispute that Mr A continued to make unnecessary payments for twelve months. This would have caused him worry, distress and anxiety at a time when he says his health was already difficult. Mr A has provided evidence to show he knew the payments he was making were unnecessary, as early as July 2018. An Instagram post from the child states they were not living with the mother anymore.

31. We asked Mr A why he continued to make payments to the child’s mother when he knew the child was no longer living with her.

32. Mr A explained he did this because of what CMS had explained would happen if he stopped. The results of non-payment are clearly set out in the schedule sent by CMS on 13 August 2018. They include being put on Collect and Pay (a service where CMS takes money from a parent’s wages by direct debit and a fee is charged for this) and the potential for a Deduction from Earnings (a way of collecting child maintenance directly from a paying parent’s earnings or pension) order being made.

33. Mr A said he contacted CMS in September to discuss whether he needed to continue making payments as the child was no longer living with the mother. He says during this call he was advised by CMS to keep paying. CMS has since deleted Mr A’s records, so the only evidence available is his account. We think, based on the evidence he sent us, it is likely Mr A knew that the child had moved out of their mother’s home at this point. In these circumstances, it is more likely than not that he contacted CMS to discuss the matter. Given that CMS did not close the case until the following March, we think it did tell Mr A to continue making payments.

34. It is entirely understandable that Mr A continued making payments in the circumstances. CMS has enforcement powers that can lead to a parent like Mr A losing their passport, or even being sent to prison.

35. Knowing he was making payments unnecessarily would have been a stressful experience. This was roughly £400 per month for one year. It must have been incredibly frustrating to know that he could have had the benefit of this money at a time when he says he needed it for his health.

36. Not only did Mr A experience frustration and distress as he knew about the maintenance issue, but it also seems that this continued for much longer than necessary because of CMS’s decision not to reimburse him what he had overpaid.

37. We can see that Mr A spent a lot of time from August 2019 chasing the matter through many different avenues from CMS to Tribunal to ICE, before finally reaching us. Throughout this time, CMS at first refused to acknowledge its failings even when the Tribunal pointed them out. It was not until ICE’s recommendations in April 2023 that it accepted fault and even then, missed the agreed deadline to complete the recommendations and reimburse Mr A. This added to and made Mr A's experience worse.

38. This could have all been avoided had CMS simply accepted its mistake and taken action to put things right by reimbursing the overpayment at an earlier stage.

39. We do not think that ICE properly addressed the impact this had on Mr A when it decided on its recommendation. We think its consideration fell short of our Complaint Standards. Although ICE’s recommendation is within the parameters established in the Guide, given the impact this matter likely had on Mr A and the length of time it was ongoing, we think the circumstances of the case mean the payment should be higher.

1. We found that The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) failed to pay enough compensation to Mr A after its failure to tell him about his child maintenance case closing. We think there is scope for going beyond the usual parameters of standard consolatory payments. This is because of the worry, distress and anxiety caused by the failing together with the significant amount of time it has taken to resolve the matter, which caused added worry, distress and anxiety.

2. We uphold the complaint.

3. We recommend that within one month of this final report CMS pays Mr A £800 and that it gives us evidence of the payment.

40. In considering our recommendations, we have referred to our ‘Principles for Remedy’. These state that where poor service or maladministration (fault) has led to injustice or hardship, the organisation responsible should take steps to put things right.

41. If possible, it should return the person affected to the position they would have been in if the poor service had not happened. If that is not possible, they should compensate them appropriately.

42. To decide on a level of financial payment, we review similar cases where the person has experienced similar injustice, along with the Scale. We have decided the circumstances of this complaint fall into level three on the Scale.

43. We recommend that within four weeks of the date of this final report, CMS should:

a) pay Mr A £800 in recognition of the emotional impact he experienced and the time he has spent chasing the matter. This £800 is in addition to the £150 recommended by ICE and paid by CMS in September 2023, taking the total payment to £950 (this is the top payment in level three of the Scale to reflect how long Mr A’s experience lasted)

b) give us evidence that it has made this payment.