Child Maintenance Service (CMS)

3. Mr A complains about CMS and its handling of his child maintenance case. He says it failed to consider evidence he provided in November 2017 about his income, which caused a delay in it correctly calculating his maintenance payments until 2020. Mr A says CMS did not handle his personal information correctly and sent documents to the wrong address. He also says it did not communicate properly and there were long delays in the complaints process. Mr A says his complaint has been upheld by the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) but CMS has not yet been made responsible and it should make a further payment to him.

4. Mr A says CMS’s mistakes caused him distress over a long time. He says the arrears (the money he owes) are because of CMS’s failings and they are causing him financial difficulty.

5. Mr A wants CMS to improve its complaint handling and make another payment to him.

6. Mr A was paying maintenance to the mother of his child (Ms Y) by direct pay with CMS. Direct pay means CMS advises the parents of the liability calculations and they arrange payment between them. From 14 June 2014 he was paying a weekly amount of £36.91. From 1 November 2015 his weekly liability was calculated at £54.70, based on his income at this time.

7. On 19 June 2018 Ms Y asked CMS for a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR means to challenge the amount of payment) of the latest annual review decision, from 14 June 2018, because she said Mr A’s income was more than the amount used in the calculation and that he should be liable for increased payments.

8. MR is the first stage of the appeals process. CMS contacted Mr A’s representative to tell him about the MR request and they gave a new address for him. But this was not updated correctly by CMS on its records.

9. On 25 June 2018, Mr A wrote a letter to CMS to say his income had changed and gave it his employment contract and payslips. CMS sent this back to the previous address because it had not changed his address.

10. On 6 July 2018 CMS spoke to Mr A’s representative and said it had used the same income details since 1 November 2015 and no current income review had been done. CMS said it was Mr A’s legal responsibility to tell it about a change of more than 25% in income, when this happens. Mr A’s representative told CMS that a change in income was reported in November 2017.

11. On 10 July 2018 CMS cancelled the MR request to do a backdated review. On 27 September 2018 CMS said the review had been cancelled as it did not have enough information to complete it.

12. CMS completed an annual review from 14 June 2019 but Mr A’s weekly liability was unchanged at £54.70 a week, based on the previous current income.

13. On 19 June 2020 Ms Y questioned the income used in the latest annual review. CMS received an MR and wrote to Mr A at the wrong address asking him to give proof of his income. From November 2018 CMS was able to access HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) Real Time Information (RTI) that gives up to date information about Pay As You Earn (PAYE) income.

14. On 6 July 2020 Mr A gave his wage slips for April to June 2020and his P60 for the 2020 tax year. This was in response to CMS’s letter telling him about the MR and a request to give proof of income. This was sent to the wrong address but we understand Mr A received and responded to it.

15. When it looked at the MR, CMS said it had not looked at the change to Mr A’s current income in November 2017 when it should have done. On 10 July 2020 CMS looked at the RTI to recalculate the liability. This resulted in a weekly payment of £96.97 from 24 November 2017. The correct payment start date should have been from Mr A’s employment start date on 13 November 2017. Although CMS had completed a backdated review for 2017, there is no evidence it considered whether that decision affected the annual reviews for 2018, 2019 and 2020.

16. Due to the backdated increase in Mr A’s payment, CMS said he owed arrears of £5,515.94. CMS sent notification of the MR decision to Mr A on 16 July 2020 to the correct address. It said he could appeal to a tribunal and told Mr A that he had to pay £890.87 a month. This amount was made up of both ongoing maintenance payments and arrears he owed.

17. Mr A sent a letter to CMS on 23 July 2020 to complain about the action taken on the backdating of the review and the MR decision. He says he would pay £420.20 a month until his appeal to a tribunal was heard. CMS says it did not get this letter. On 30 September 2020, in a phone call with Mr A, CMS said it would reduce the monthly payment to £488.10.

18. Mr A wrote to CMS on 30 September 2020 and said he and his representative had spoken to CMS several times since July 2020, and he said he could not afford the scheduled amount but would pay the agreed lower amount until the appeal had been heard. He also sent a copy of his complaint dated 23 July. CMS did not respond.

19. CMS received a letter from Mr A on 6 October 2020 where he raised concerns again over the amount he was being asked to pay and said he had no response to the letter of 23 July.

20. CMS’s appeals team sent its appeal to Mr A and HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) on 12 November 2020, where they said the annual reviews for June 2018, 2019 and 2020 needed to be corrected. It used HMRC information to calculate Mr A’s weekly liability at £87.48, £86.60 and £99.99 for those years. It said it asked CMS staff to make the correction. CMS did not make the correction until after the tribunal had been heard.

21. On 23 March 2021 Mr A’s appeal was heard and partly upheld. The tribunal said there had been mistakes by CMS over several years, which included the wrong use of Mr A’s income in calculating his child maintenance for three annual reviews and after he reported his change of circumstances in November 2017. It said it could only look at the maintenance calculation under appeal, not at how CMS handled Mr A’s case.

22. Mr A wrote to CMS on 13 April 2021 about his letters of July and September 2020. He said he wanted an investigation by ICE and needed a final response (to his complaint) to do that. The request for a final response was also sent by email by Mr A’s MP on 15 April 2021. The MP sent another letter to CMS on 28 April 2021 and another email on 13 May 2021 asking for a response.

23. After the tribunal decision, on 25 May 2021 CMS took action to correct the calculations and this information was sent to Mr A on 27 May 2021.

24. DWP’s complaints team wrote to Mr A’s MP on 25 May 2021 and apologised for the time taken to reply. It agreed Mr A did not get the service he should have and because of the distress caused, CMS made a payment of £75.00.

25. On 26 October 2021, ICE accepted the investigation and published its final report on 6 April 2023. It upheld Mr A’s complaint and advised a further payment of £175 for the poor handling of his complaint and for not reviewing Mr A’s liability over a long period. Mr A was not happy with this and contacted us.

28. CMS made some mistakes in Mr A’s case. In its report ICE also said CMS did not review Mr A’s income during the period. There was a delay in action on the increase in Mr A’s wages in 2017 before it decided to review Mr A’s income in 2018. That review increased his payments a lot. We understand Mr A is not happy. He does not question his responsibility to pay child maintenance but says the big increase in what he has to pay now could have been avoided if the delay by CMS did not happen.

29. And, Mr A gave an updated address to CMS but it used the old address to return his documents.

30. CMS admitted its mistakes in reviewing Mr A’s claim and that it did not use a correct address when sending correspondence It made a payment of £75 for the error.

31. CMS did not do an annual review from 2015. If it had done, it would have found the increase in Mr A’s wages in 2017. This would have avoided the distress of an increase in liability. There was a delay correcting the years for 2018, 2019 and 2020 which was only done after the tribunal in 2021.

32. We agree with ICE that CMS made mistakes and the action of CMS are not in line with DWP’s guidance that says, ‘You can trust us to do what we say we will do; follow processes correctly; and protect your personal information (our personal information charter tells you more)’.

33. We thought about what impact was caused by failure to act in line with the Charter. In our view, the error caused by using the wrong address caused Mr A short-term avoidable distress and frustration. It also delayed his review, causing an increase in his arrears.

34. The ICE report recommended a further payment of £175 for the mistakes caused by CMS. We do not think this puts right the distress caused by the delay in action being taken to correct mistakes and in not updating Mr A’s address.

35. We looked at our ‘Guidance on Financial Remedy’ and can see the impact caused to Mr A is at level two on our severity of justice scale. This describes, ‘a degree of distress, inconvenience, or minor pain.’ We have also taken into account the length of time during which Mr A experienced this frustration and distress.

36. We asked CMS to consider making a further £200 consolatory payment, in line with our Principles for Remedy. These say public bodies should, ‘ideally, return complainants and, where appropriate, others who have suffered injustice or hardship as a result of the same maladministration or poor service, to the position they were in before the maladministration or poor service took place.’

37. CMS agreed to pay Mr A £200 to put things right and we are pleased it has helped with this complaint. We think this, the apologies and the previous payment made is enough to put things right for Mr A for the impact caused by its errors.

38. We will take no further action as CMS has made a payment plan with Mr A for the arrears going forward and we hope the action we have taken to get a fair outcome is helpful to Mr A.

1. We have carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), part of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). We are sorry to hear of the stress Mr A experienced with his child maintenance liability.

2. We looked at the information Mr A and CMS gave us and we can see CMS made some mistakes in its handling of Mr A’s case. Where it made mistakes, we thought carefully about the impact these had. With this in mind, we asked CMS to take further action to put things right for Mr A. It agreed to do this, so we think it has now done enough to put things right. This means we are not taking any further action. We explain our decision below.