11.08.14
New fees go live for Child Maintenance Service
From today parents who cannot agree to organise and pay their own child maintenance without government help will be charged an additional fee.
The DWP says that the introduction of the fee is designed to encourage separated couples to come to their own financial arrangements.
In the future, if the state manages maintenance payments – through the Child Maintenance Service's 'Collect & Pay' facility – parents will see 4% deducted from their instalments. And the partner paying the maintenance will have to pay a 20% surcharge.
The move is part of reforms under which the Child Support Agency (CSA) is being wound down over the next three years. As it closes its cases, parents are encouraged either to make their own arrangements or take advantage of the government’s Direct Pay system.
Direct Pay allows parents to work together, using a new online self-service account, but intervenes in the event of missed payments or problems. The facility, based on online banking formats, enables users to make and receive safe and secure payments 24 hours a day, as well as update their details, send enquiries, and see records of letters and phone calls at the click of a mouse.
Steve Webb MP, child maintenance minister, said: “For decades, thousands of children – over half of those in the old CSA system – did not get the regular financial support they needed, while at the same time costs reached huge levels.
“This government has taken radical action to eradicate the failures of the past and replace them with a fair, efficient, streamlined service, fit for the 21st century – a system that supports parents and gets more money to more children.”
If the new options are not utilised, families can be transferred into a replacement statutory system in which the new Child Maintenance Service will collect and pay maintenance, again with the option of parents tracking progress using the self-service account.
But, in order to enable the new statutory service to concentrate on the most challenging of cases and avoid replicating the out of control bureaucracy which characterised the old system, new ongoing collection charges will apply from today to discourage its use when parents could instead work together.
The department has trialled the new online facility with a small group of parents since January.
However, Caroline Davey, of the Gingerbread charity for single parents, condemned the changes. She told Good Morning Britain: “We know that single parents don't use the government service unless they absolutely have to and the prospect that they will then lose 4% of every maintenance payment for their children, which is for all the essentials that bringing up children cost, is absolutely horrifying.”
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