Child Maintenance Service (CMS)

3. Miss U complains that CMS has refused to put arrears back onto her account after her ex-partner failed to pay them. She says she did not know she was meant to be receiving the arrears and so could not tell CMS she was not receiving them.

4. She says she has been very upset by this as she has repeatedly asked CMS to collect the arrears from her ex-partner. She says she has lost trust in CMS and feels it does not care about her and her son.

5. Miss U wants CMS to reinstate the arrears and collect them. She would also like it to pay her £1,000 to recognise the distress it has caused.

6. Miss U has a son that her ex-partner has been required to pay maintenance for since March 2017. He was making payments to her via Direct Pay (where the paying parent makes payment directly to the parent with care, rather than to CMS) from January 2022. There were arrears on the account at this time.

7. In July, CMS told Miss U’s ex-partner that he needed to clear the arrears on the account by increasing his monthly payment. He continued to make payments to Miss U directly, but these were at the normal maintenance rate, not the increased arrears clearing one.

8. Because he was paying by Direct Pay, CMS assumes the parent with care is receiving the agreed sum, unless it hears otherwise. With arrears, this means an account balance decreases by the specified amount each time a payment is due until this is cleared.

9. In August 2023 Miss U asked why her arrears balance had decreased to zero and found out about the July 2022 instruction. She told CMS she did not know about this at the time and confirmed she had not received the arrears payments. CMS has declined to reinstate the arrears as she would like.

12. When we decide if we should conduct a detailed investigation of a complaint, 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 found that CMS was right not to apply the arrears back to Miss U’s account.

13. Miss U complains that CMS will not reinstate the arrears on her account. This is despite her having not received these.

14. CMS confirms it will not reinstate the arrears. It says this is because it notified Miss U she was due to receive payment to clear them and she did not tell it she was not getting this payment for 13 months.

15. CMS’ Decision Makers’ Guide sets out what it should do when arrears accrue during a period of direct payment. It says that it will generally only look to reinstate balances back to the last annual review after the issue is raised (March 2023 in this case). It also explains it has discretion to backdate this further if it thinks there are exceptional circumstances to warrant this. The exception must apply to the reason why the parent with care has not told CMS they did not receive payment much sooner than they did.

16. Miss U thinks the exceptional circumstances apply here. She says this is because DWP changed her address to a Jobcentre in February 2022. This was not something she asked it to do, nor was she aware it had done this. DWP updated its records in November. In the meantime, any postal correspondence CMS sent to Miss U was sent to the Jobcentre.

17. It is important to note here that CMS was not involved in the address change. It simply acted on the information it held about Miss U at this time. DWP has acknowledged its error and apologised to Miss U both in writing and by way of a financial payment.

18. We accept that Miss U would not have received any postal letters sent to her during this time. That said, we do not consider this has any significant effect on the outcome of this particular matter.

19. CMS explains that Miss U had amended her preferred method of contact to its self-service portal in February 2019 – three years before the address change. It told her about the July 2022 increase in payment via the portal. It did not send any postal correspondence about this.

20. Our Principles of Good Administration (our Principles) say that public bodies should communicate with people clearly and in an appropriate manner. We consider CMS adhered to this when it contacted Miss U in her preferred method at this time. It posted details of the planned arrears collection on the portal, sent Miss U an email which told her there was a new message waiting for her on her self-service account – as well as saying she would not receive a letter in the post about this – and sent her a text message to tell her it had reviewed her payment plan.

21. Miss U does not recall receiving a text message. We acknowledge this, but do not consider this strong evidence of CMS not doing this. The message would have left a digital footprint on her account, which is what caused CMS to say this was sent.

22. Miss U accepts she may have received an email, but that this probably routed to her junk box and automatically deleted after a certain period of time. This is of course really unfortunate, but we do not consider CMS can reasonably be held responsible for it. We are satisfied that CMS notified Miss U of the arrears collection plan in the way Miss U had asked it to.

23. CMS also notes that Miss U did not question the arrears being reduced until August 2023. This was some time after she had checked the portal following the March 2023 annual review. The arrears information would have been available at this time.

24. We can see why Miss U is upset about this matter. Her son was due maintenance from his father and even though he has not paid the significant arrears on the account, CMS will not reinstate the unpaid arrears. We acknowledge this must seem very unfair. We consider that CMS did what it should have to communicate the change to Miss U. It notified her about the arrears at the time, and it was her responsibility to check the information sent to her and to raise any non-compliance with this with CMS promptly. Unfortunately, she did not do this and so CMS is correct to say she does not meet the exceptional circumstances required for it to apply its discretion.

25. We can also see why Miss U is concerned about the change of address which happened at the same time. This is not of any real relevance to the matter. Regardless of what the address was on Miss U’s account at this time, no postal letter would be sent to her. It therefore does not make any difference whether the address was right or wrong – CMS’ July 2022 email was clear that no postal letter would be issued.

26. We recognise this decision will be disappointing for Miss U but hope we have been able to provide clear reasons why we have reached it.

1. We have carefully considered Miss U’s complaint about CMS. We were sorry to hear about the problems she has experienced.

2. We can see where Miss U’s complaint has arisen and acknowledge how unfair CMS’ decision not to reinstate unpaid arrears on her account must seem. We have seen no indication that CMS got this decision wrong and no exceptional circumstances for why Miss U could not identify the fact she was not receiving arrears and tell CMS about it in a timely manner. Unfortunately, this means her child’s father has evaded paying the money he should have to his child.