Children: Maintenance

For most cases, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) uses income information provided directly by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and benefit data held by the Department to calculate child maintenance liabilities, helping to ensure assessments are based on verified income information. Where a parent believes that the income used in a calculation does not accurately reflect the paying parent's financial circumstances, they may request a review of the calculation and, in certain circumstances, apply for a variation. Cases involving suspected misrepresentation or inaccurate income information may be referred to the Financial Investigation Unit, which has powers to investigate and obtain information from financial institutions where appropriate.

The CMS is delivering a Modernisation Programme to improve customer access, efficiency and transparency. This includes integrated online application services, the My Child Maintenance Case (MCMC) service, which provides customers with online access to case information and payment schedules, and Customer Connect, which enables secure online communication between parents and caseworkers. Telephone and assisted digital support remain available for customers who need additional assistance.

The programme has also introduced improved digital communications and enhanced data sharing to support faster and more accurate maintenance calculations as well as predictive analytics to help identify cases at risk of non-compliance.

The Department for Work and Pensions continues to work with HMRC and maintains a range of controls and assurance processes to support the accuracy of child maintenance calculations.

CMS conducts accuracy checks on a sample of maintenance calculations it makes. Although it gathers data on incorrect calculations through these checks and customer driven reviews, the CMS does not compile data in a reportable format on cases where a child maintenance calculation was subsequently found to have been set too high because of an incorrect income.

To extract this data would require significant manual intervention, as each case would need to be individually reviewed to determine whether an error had occurred due to incorrect income, and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.