Official Statistics

Child Maintenance Service statistics: data to March 2023 (experimental)

Published 27 June 2023

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

The latest release of these statistics can be found in the collection of Child Maintenance Service statistics.

This is a release of statistics on the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) for Great Britain between January 2015 and March 2023. The release includes minor revisions to previously published statistics.

1. Main Stories

In the quarter to March 2023:

• the CMS received 32,000 new applications, an increase of 20% on the quarter to March 2022
• 910,000 children were covered by CMS arrangements, an increase of 21,000 since the quarter to December 2022
• of Paying Parents using Collect and Pay, 65% paid some maintenance, the same as the quarter to December 2022. Of this group:
  • 24% paid up to 90% of the maintenance due for the quarter
  • 41% paid over 90% of the maintenance due for the quarter

2. What you need to know

Child maintenance is financial support, towards a child’s everyday living costs, that a parent without the main day-to-day care of the child, Paying Parent, provides to the other parent, Receiving Parent.

Separated parents can arrange child maintenance themselves. This is called a family-based arrangement and is a private way to agree child maintenance. Family-based arrangements are not covered by this release.

The CMS offers 2 levels of service:

• Direct Pay – the CMS calculates the amount of maintenance to be paid, and parents arrange payments between themselves
• Collect and Pay – the CMS will collect and manage payments between the parents when parents cannot arrange payments between themselves, or if the Paying Parent does not keep up with payments

Further detail on the CMS is provided in the About these statistics section of this release.

3. Applications to the Child Maintenance Service

In the year to March 2023 there were 130,000 new applications to the CMS, an increase of 43% from 87,000 in the year to March 2022.

Applications to the Child Maintenance Service, quarters ending March 2021 to March 2023

Source: Child Maintenance Service statistics data to March 2023, National Tables, table 3

Of the 32,000 new applications to the CMS in the quarter ending March 2023, 55% were exempt from paying the £20 application fee. This was mainly due to applicants who had previously experienced domestic abuse.

At the end of March 2023, the CMS was managing 660,000 arrangements for 600,000 Paying Parents. There has been a 11% increase in the number of arrangements since the end of March 2022

See tables 1-3 of the national tables for more information on applications.

See Stat-Xplore for more information on arrangements and Paying Parents.

4. Composition of cases on the Child Maintenance Service

In the quarter ending March 2023, the number of arrangements overall increased by 14,000 from the quarter ending December 2022.

Flow of arrangements on the Child Maintenance Service, quarter ending March 2023

Source: Child Maintenance Service statistics data to March 2023, National Tables, table 4

Data on the flow of arrangements around the CMS in the quarter ending March 2023 shows:

• of those new applicants who have been assigned, most new applicants start on Direct Pay: 17,000 new applicants joined Direct Pay during the quarter
• 61% of all CMS arrangements use Direct Pay, with 37% using Collect and Pay
• more parents moved from Direct Pay to Collect and Pay than the other way around: 9,600 parents switched to Collect and Pay during the quarter
• the number of arrangements not yet assigned to a service has increased from 11,000 to 13,000
• the proportion of arrangements that are not yet assigned to a service type accounts for 2% of all arrangements. This has remained the same since the last quarter

See table 4 of the national tables

See Stat-Xplore for more information on arrangements.

5. Children covered by the Child Maintenance Service

In the quarter ending March 2023, 910,000 children were covered by CMS arrangements an increase of 21,000 from the quarter ending December 2022.

Children covered by the Child Maintenance Service, quarters ending March 2021 to March 2023

Source: Child Maintenance Service Children data, available on Stat-Xplore

At the end of March 2023:

• 570,000 children were covered by 400,000 Direct Pay arrangements
• 320,000 children were covered by 240,000 Collect and Pay arrangements:
  • 170,000 of these children were covered by 120,000 Collect and Pay arrangements where the Paying Parent paid some maintenance during the quarter
  • 140,000 of these children were covered by 120,000 Collect and Pay arrangements where no maintenance was paid during the quarter
• 18,000 children not yet assigned to a service

The number of children covered by CMS arrangements has increased steadily over the last 2 years

See Stat-Xplore for more information on children.

6. Paying Parents and the Collect and Pay service

This section defines compliance as any money paid towards child maintenance due on a Paying Parent’s case.

This includes Paying Parents transferred from the Direct Pay service because they have not kept up with payments.

Compliance rate of Paying Parents on the Collect and Pay Service, quarters ending March 2021 to March 2023

Source: Child Maintenance Service Paying Parents data, available on Stat-Xplore

In the quarter ending March 2023, of 170,000 Paying Parents due to pay via the Collect and Pay service:

• 60,000 (35%) paid no maintenance
• 110,000 (65%) paid some maintenance, of which:
  • 41,000 (24%) paid up to 90% of the maintenance due for the quarter (further breakdowns of this group are available on Stat-Xplore)
  • 71,000 (41%) paid over 90% of the maintenance due for the quarter

The percentage of parents paying something towards their maintenance has remained at 65%, since the last quarter.

Since the quarter ending March 2022, there has been a 2-percentage point decrease in the percentage of parents paying over 90% of their maintenance due for the quarter, falling from 43% to 41%. This decrease should be seen in context with how child maintenance is collected for parents who pay via deductions from their monthly Universal Credit payments. 34% of Paying Parents were due to pay via Deduction from Benefits in the quarter ending March 2023, most of whom were claiming Universal Credit.

See the Background Information document for more details on compliance.

Since March 2022, there has been an increase from 63% to 65%, in those paying anything towards their maintenance.

Further detail on compliance is provided in the About these statistics section of this release.

See Stat-Xplore for more information on Paying Parents

7. Paying Parents characteristics

In the quarter ending March 2023, of the 600,000 Paying Parents:

• 93% were recorded as male
• nearly three-quarters (73%) were between the ages of 30 and 49
• 56% had 1 qualifying child
• of those who had 2 or more qualifying children, 83% had 1 arrangement and 17% had 2 or more arrangements

See Stat-Xplore for more information on Paying Parents

8. Child Maintenance due and paid

The CMS monitors payments made through the Collect and Pay service only. Parents on Direct Pay with unpaid maintenance would first have to transfer to Collect and Pay for the CMS to monitor payments.

Child Maintenance due and paid each quarter, quarters ending March 2022 to March 2023

Source: Child Maintenance Service statistics data to March 2023, National Tables, table 5

During the quarter ending March 2023, £309.0 million child maintenance was due to be paid either via the Direct Pay service or the Collect and Pay service.

• £237.0 million was arranged through the Direct Pay service:
  • DWP does not measure the compliance of Paying Parents on the Direct Pay service
• £72.0 million was arranged through the Collect and Pay service:
  • £49.1 million was paid
  • £22.9 million was unpaid maintenance due to be paid through the Collect and Pay service including any transferred from Direct Pay

Since 2012, when the CMS began, £547.9 million in unpaid maintenance has accumulated. This amounts to 8% of all maintenance due to be paid since the start of the service. This proportion has remained the same since the quarter ending September 2021.

See tables 5 and 6 of the national tables for more information.

9. Enforcement

The CMS can enforce the collection child maintenance for those on Collect and Pay through:

• deduction from earnings orders and requests
• deduction from benefits
• deduction orders
• courts

Regular collection of ongoing maintenance can be enforced through deductions from earnings or benefits. The Paying Parent may also opt to use these methods voluntarily.

Methods of Payments used on the Collect and Pay Service, quarters ending March 2021 to March 2023

Source: Child Maintenance Service Paying Parents data, available on Stat-Xplore

In the quarter ending March 2023, of 170,000 Paying Parents due to pay via the Collect and Pay service:

• 48,000 (28%) had a deduction from earnings order or request in place
• 59,000 (34%) were due to pay via deduction from benefits
• 65,000 (38%) were due to pay via other methods of payment, predominantly default standing orders

See Stat-Xplore for more information on payment methods.

The CMS may pursue unpaid maintenance through liability orders granted by the courts. Liability orders allow legal action to be taken, such as referral to enforcement agents, who can seize goods and sell them to cover any unpaid maintenance and costs.

Deduction Orders and Civil Enforcement Actions in process, quarters ending March 2021 to March 2023

Source: Child Maintenance Service statistics data to March 2023, National Tables, table 7.1

At the end of March 2023:

• 7,100 liability orders were in process
• 5,000 regular or lump sum deduction orders were in process
• 3,900 enforcement agent referrals were in process

In the past year to March 2023, the CMS has collected £3.9 million from Paying Parents with a sanctions action in process.

A Paying Parent is described as having a sanctions action in process when a service request is raised to formally consider applying sanctions to a Paying Parent. Not all such cases will result in an application being made to courts.

See tables 7.1 and 7.2 of the national tables for more information.

Further detail on enforcement is provided in the About these statistics section of this release.

10. About these statistics

These statistics are classed as experimental statistics.

The Child Maintenance Service

The CMS was introduced in December 2012 as part of the Government’s Child Maintenance Reforms. It replaced the Child Support Agency (CSA). All CSA cases with an ongoing liability were closed by December 2018. Parents were then encouraged to make a new family-based arrangement or an arrangement through the CMS.

Before applying to the CMS, parents must use the Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance (GHACM) service. GHACM is a free service that provides impartial information and support to help separated parents make decisions about their child maintenance arrangements. GHACM was introduced in November 2021 and replaced Child Maintenance Options.

Parents who want to apply to the CMS must pay a £20 application fee. Parents do not have to pay this if they:

• have been a victim of domestic abuse
• declare their child has been the victim of abuse
• are under 19 years of age

When a parent makes an application to the CMS, they will be told how much child maintenance should be paid.

Direct Pay

Direct Pay can be chosen by either parent with the other’s agreement. Neither parent pays collection fees under Direct Pay.

Parents are issued a text message 3 months after they set up a Direct Pay arrangement, and at each annual review, to check that the arrangement is still meeting their requirements.

If parents cannot arrange payments between themselves, or if the Paying Parent does not keep up with the payments, the Receiving Parent can ask the CMS to switch the case to the Collect and Pay service.

Collect and Pay

The CMS calculates the amount of maintenance due (including the recovery of any unpaid maintenance that may have built up under the Direct Pay service), collects maintenance from the Paying Parent, and pays it to the Receiving Parent.

There are ongoing collection charges for use of the Collect and Pay service, payable by both:

• the Paying Parent (20% charged on top of the maintenance amount)
• the Receiving Parent (4% taken out of the maintenance amount)

Non-compliance under the Collect and Pay service can lead to the use of enforcement powers.

Enforcement

When a payment is missed, the CMS contacts the Paying Parent to arrange a recovery of what is owed and make clear the actions that may be pursued in the absence of a payment.

For parents on Collect and Pay, enforcement is automatically pursued on their behalf.

For parents on Direct Pay, the arrangement must be switched to the Collect and Pay service before any enforcement action can commence.

The CMS can enforce the collection of child maintenance in 4 major ways:

• Deduction from Earnings Order or Request – money is recovered from the Paying Parent’s earnings via their employer, who will be instructed on the amount to deduct
• Deduction from Benefit – money is recovered from the Paying Parent’s benefits
• Deduction Order – money is deducted directly from the Paying Parent’s bank or building society account
• Courts – a Paying Parent can be taken to court over unpaid maintenance

The CMS may pursue unpaid maintenance through Liability Orders granted by the courts. Liability Orders allow legal action to be taken, which will depend on the individual case. These actions include:

• Referral to Enforcement Agents
• Registering a Paying Parent’s debt on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines
• Using an order for sale to sell a Paying Parent’s property or assets
• Stopping the Paying Parent getting or keeping a driving licence or passport
• Sending the Paying Parent to prison

Sanctions are only used when every other method of recovering unpaid child maintenance has been attempted. The CMS only pursues these sanctions when they believe the Paying Parent can pay but are refusing to do so.

Definitions

Children covered

Children covered is the number of children for whom the Paying Parent has a child maintenance arrangement.

Qualifying children

Counts of qualifying children include all children who are associated with an open arrangement and are below 20 years of age.

Compliance

This measures how much maintenance has been successfully collected from the Paying Parent compared to the amount of new maintenance arranged via the Collect and Pay service in that three-month period.

Note that, if a parent is trying to settle arrears that have previously accumulated, they would need to pay more than the amount of new maintenance arranged during the quarter.

Parents paying over 90% are grouped together because even if a Paying Parent is fully complying with an arrangement, their compliance rate may not be exactly 100%. This is due to differences between how liability accumulates on the CMS Liability Schedule (used to calculate the amount due) and how collections are scheduled in practice. This group also includes Paying Parents who have paid more than 100% of their liability for the quarter, to pay off arrears that they have previously accumulated.

See the Background Information document for more details.

Comparisons

Comparisons between these statistics on the CMS and statistics previously published on the Child Support Agency or CSA Table 1 (Paying Parents with CSA Arrears), which is published alongside the CMS statistics, should not be made as the two services have different aims and cover different groups.

The CMS launched in 2012 and is designed to support separated families to come to their own financial arrangements. Child Maintenance Options was created to support parents to set up collaborative, family-based arrangements. In November 2021 Child Maintenance Options was replaced with GHACM.

Rounding

Percentages are calculated using numbers prior to rounding and rounded to the nearest whole percentage point. Amounts have been rounded to the nearest £100,000. Volumes have been rounded as detailed below, in some cases a lower level of rounding may be applied to explain the difference between volumes.

Range	Rounded to the nearest
0 to 1,000	10
1,001 to 10,000	100
10,001 to 100,000	1,000
100,001 to 1,000,000	10,000
1,000,001 to 10,000,000	100,000
10,000,001 to 100,000,000	1,000,000

Release schedule

This release is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December.

The next release is planned for 26 September 2023.

Changes made to this publication

Note that there are no data changes, however:

• the structure of the release has been reviewed, subsequently the ordering has changed to focus on the statistics
• to improve alignment, this release has adopted the rounding approach of other Official Statistics

Also note that the CSA Arrears table will be published alongside the CMS statistics from this release. The previous CSA tables had been suspended since the June 2022 release due to a data issue leading to missing cases within a source dataset. As previously announced, a reduced set of CSA Arrears statistics have been developed for publication from this quarter onwards.

Where to find out more

Read the Background Information document for more details on the CMS statistics.

Read previous releases of these statistics.

Related statistics: read Child maintenance facts and figures for more details on Separated families statistics and historical Child Maintenance Options, and CSA statistics.

11. Future development and your feedback

Planned Changes

We are hoping to move more of our regular statistics to the Stat-Xplore platform in the near future.

Feedback and queries

If you have any views on the above changes, queries or feedback on any aspect of our statistics please email cm.analysis.research@dwp.gov.uk

Lead statistician: Juwaria Rahman

For media enquiries on these statistics, please contact the DWP press office.

ISBN: 978-1-78659-517-1