15. Before we decide if we should investigate a complaint further, we look at whether there are signs the organisation has got something wrong. We do this by comparing what should have happened with what did happen. We have done this and have not found any signs that anything went wrong when the CMS took the contested payment from 2019 or when it changed the account to Collect and Pay.
Period of unemployment
16. Mr I was unemployed from 5 April to 15 July 2019. He says the CMS claimed payments from him during this time when it should not have done.
17. ICE provided a breakdown of Mr I’s account. This shows that his liability was nil from 11 April to 14 July 2019. It shows that a payment of £104.69 was made on 17 April. This was six days after Mr I had sent the CMS a copy of his P45 which showed his employment ended on 5 April, so we understand why Mr I had concerns about this.
18. The CMS made a Deduction from Earnings Order (DEO) on 18 March. This was an instruction to Mr I’s employer to make a payment to the CMS directly from his wage. The DEO was for £453.65 to be collected monthly from 19 May 2019.
19. Mr I’s employer told the CMS on 19 March that it could not follow the DEO because he was due to leave its employment. But it seems that Mr I’s employer did follow the collection order as it sent £104.69 to the CMS on 17 April – the weekly equivalent of the £453.65 monthly payment. It is reasonable to assume that this coincided with Mr I receiving his last payment from that employer after leaving 12 days before.
20. Although we understand why Mr I may think the CMS claimed maintenance from him while he was unemployed, this is not the case. The payment made on 17 April related to a period before his employment ended on 5 April. No further payment was made while Mr I was unemployed. We have decided to take no further action on this point and hope our explanation reassures Mr I .
Charges for collection
21. The CMS allows payments to be made in two ways. Direct Pay is where the parents arrange payments themselves – usually with the paying parent making payment directly into the parent-with-care’s bank account. Collect and Pay is also offered, which involves the CMS collecting payments from the paying parent and passing them on to the parent-with-care.
22. Both parents initially have a choice in the method used. If either chooses Direct Pay, which there is no charge for, this will be the payment method used. This is how Mr I made his maintenance payments between November 2013 and November 2018. He made payments in full so there was no unpaid balance on his account at this point.
23. The CMS can change the payment method from Direct Pay to Collect and Pay if the parent-with-care asks it to.
24. In November 2018, the CMS did its annual review of Mr I’s account. Before this, his weekly liability was £67.20 (£281.60 per month). The CMS increased this to £80.24 (£348.58 per month) from 20 November, based on the information HMRC had given it about Mr I’s income from the 2017 to 2018 tax year. The CMS explained to Mr I that he should pay £281.60 to the parent-with-care as usual on 28 November, but that he needed to start making payments of £348.58 from 28 December onwards.
25. Mr I made the £281.60 payment in November. He also made payments to the parent-with-care in December 2018 and January 2019 but these were at the original rate rather than the increased rate. This led to the parent-with-care asking the CMS to change the payment method to Collect and Pay.
26. The CMS’ Law and Decision Making Guidance says where such a request is made, it may only put in place Collect and Pay where it is satisfied that without the arrangement child support maintenance is ‘unlikely to be paid’ in line with the calculation.
27. The CMS took steps to find out whether this was likely to be the case when it asked Mr I on 19 February why he had not made full payment of £348.58. Mr I responded the same day to explain that he had continued to make payment at the lower rate because this was the correct sum due based on the salary details he had provided in March 2018. Mr I made a further direct payment to the parent-with-care at the lower rate of £281.60 on 28 February 2019.
28. The parent-with-care called the CMS to report this on 14 March. The CMS wrote to Mr I on 18 March to explain that it had changed the payment to Collect and Pay. The CMS did this because Mr I had not responded to its 19 February contact. This was not the correct basis on which to make the change, but that does not affect the situation. Mr I had said in his reply that he believed the November 2018 calculation was incorrect. We recognise this, but Mr I could have appealed the calculations rather than simply paying the lower rate. We have not seen anything to suggest Mr I appealed, so the parent-with-care was entitled to expect him to pay the £348.58 due.
29. Mr I did continue to make payments to his ex-partner, but because this was less than he needed to pay, arrears started to build up on his account. Given that Mr I had suggested he would not be making the increased payment, the CMS decided to enforce the Collect and Pay via a DEO. This decision seems to be appropriate as Mr I was unlikely to make the correct payment.
30. For Collect and Pay, the CMS claims charges from both parents. The paying parent pays an extra 20% of the sum due, with the parent-with-care receiving 96% of the sum due. The Child Support Fees Regulations give the CMS the power to make these charges and says there is a charge of £50 for making a DEO. The CMS claimed this amount when it instructed Mr I’s employer to set up the DEO on 18 March 2019.
31. One partial payment was collected in line with the DEO in April, before Mr I became unemployed. He was back in employment in July so the CMS picked up where it had left off in April. This meant it sent a DEO to Mr I’s new employer and claimed another £50 charge for doing so. Payments were collected via the DEO from August 2019 until August 2020 when Mr I had made enough successful DEO payments to allow the account to go back to being Direct Pay.
32. We recognise that Mr I is unhappy with the extra charges he has paid. We accept that he did not think the CMS’ November 2018 calculations were correct, but he could have appealed rather than refusing to pay the full amount. Because he did not pay in full, it was right for the CMS to take action to recover the money he owed.