4. Mr E complains that CMS will not look into his concerns or provide evidence to show that he owes arrears of around £21,000 for the periods between 2012 to 2014, when the Child Support Agency (CSA) managed his case.
5. Mr E says his mental health has got worse because CMS continue to say the arrears are correct.
6. Mr E wants CMS to look at the evidence he has given it, to investigate his concerns about the arrears and to write them off.
7. On 5 July 2018, Mr E contacted CMS to dispute the unpaid balance of £21,039.14 that had transferred to CMS from the CSA the month before. He asked CMS to give him an account breakdown.
8. CMS asked its specialist team to look for an account breakdown for Mr E.
9. On 6 August 2018, CMS wrote to Mr E to explain it could not send the requested information because the CSA said it had already sent this to Mr E when it passed his case over to CMS.
10. In July 2021, Mr E complained to CMS about the arrears calculation being incorrect. He explained that before CSA transferred his case to CMS in 2018, he had a case with HMCTS, but the courts dropped his case because he did not send in evidence. He explained that nobody told him about this at that time. He explained he had written to CMS several times in 2018 about arrears, but it did not get back to him. He told CMS that earlier in 2021 he had requested an account breakdown from when the case was with CSA, but it had not responded.
11. On 6 August, CMS explained that the specialist team was still trying to get the information from CSA systems and it hoped to do this by 16 August.
12. The next week CMS gave Mr E an account breakdown for when the case came to it, not of a full breakdown from CSA.
13. Mr E complained to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) who told him his complaint about the arrears was outside its remit because maintenance calculations come with appeal rights.
14. Mr E’s MP wrote to CMS to ask it to provide a response to Mr E including the breakdown from when his case was with the CSA.
15. CMS said it did not have the information from CSA. It explained that due to data regulations it destroyed the data. It further explained that Mr E contacted it in 2018 to dispute the unpaid balance that had transferred to it from the CSA. It repeated what it told him in 2018 – that he already had an account statement from the CSA.
16. Mr E’s MP wrote back to CMS to explain Mr E is concerned that if it cannot give him an account breakdown to prove the arrears are correct, it should write them off.
17. CMS got specialist advice from its policy team about the unpaid balance in question. It told Mr E that they confirmed they were satisfied the unpaid balance was correct, and that CSA would have given Mr E the necessary information on the unpaid balance when it transferred his case.
19. CMS’s maintenance calculations (and formerly the CSA’s) are appealable. This means if Mr E did not agree with the calculations, he had the opportunity to first raise an MR and if not successful, to go to a tribunal.
20. Mr E did approach a tribunal, but the tribunal dropped the appeal because he did not send in the required evidence. Mr E tells us he was not aware of this at the time. We do not consider this to be a good reason not to have continued with his appeal or at the very least asked about its progress.
21. The Health Service Commissioner Act 1993 (the law) says we cannot consider a complaint where a person has or had the option to get an answer to their concerns by taking legal action, unless we consider this is (or was) unreasonable in the circumstances. Mr E wants CMS or us to recalculate his maintenance based on what he considers to be the right income. He wants CMS to write off the arrears.
22. The only way to challenge this matter was by making an appeal. Mr E is trying to achieve an outcome that can only be achieved by that route. This means it would have been reasonable for him to follow the appeal route at the time of the calculations or at the time his case was passed to CMS. We appreciate he did make attempts to do this, but it would also have been reasonable for him to have chased this up. For these reasons we cannot take any further action.
23. We appreciate the circumstances Mr E finds himself in. We understand these circumstances have made his mental health worse. Our decision is in no way meant to minimise the distress Mr E has experienced. We simply cannot achieve what Mr E is looking for. Only CMS or a court can or could have achieved this.
1. We have carefully considered Mr E’s complaint about Child Maintenance Service (CMS) and have decided to take no further action. This is because the most appropriate thing for Mr E to have done to challenge CMS’s calculations was to follow the established appeals process.
2. We appreciate Mr E does not agree with the income figures CMS hold for him and the difficult circumstances he has told us he has found himself in. The only way to challenge a CMS maintenance calculation is by requesting a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) and then to go to an appeal at tribunal if still unhappy.
3. We realise Mr E says he appealed at a tribunal in 2018 and he told us the court dropped the appeal due to him not providing evidence. He says HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) did not tell him it had dropped his case. But, it would have been reasonable for him to chase this up sooner than he did (in 2021) if he had not heard anything back.