Children: Maintenance
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Deduction from Earnings Orders and Deduction Orders from bank accounts are active.
Answered by Andrew Western
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) uses Deduction from Earnings Orders and Deduction Orders from bank accounts to help ensure parents meet their maintenance responsibilities. The number of active orders varies over time as cases progress through compliance and enforcement activity.
The Department regularly publishes Child Maintenance Service official statistics, with the latest statistics available to September 2025, with detailed quarterly statistics on CMS Paying Parents available on Stat-Xplore.
Using the ‘Method of Payment’ variable can identify the number of paying parents who used ‘Deduction from Earnings Order’ or ‘Deduction from Earnings Request’ methods to pay Child Maintenance liabilities, as at the end of each quarter.
Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required.
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