Number of old CSA cases dealt with by Child Maintenance Service below 50,000
The number of Child Support Agency cases held on Child Maintenance Service IT systems decreased from 51,600 in December 2020 to 44,900 in March 2021. The caseload has been steadily declining since December 2014 and declining sharply since December 2018. The reduction in caseload is due to the closure of cases as outlined in the child maintenance compliance and arrears strategy. All cases on the CSA computer system have now been closed.
The CSA historical debt balance continues to reduce. The amount of CSA debt held on CMS IT systems has decreased from £348.8 million in December 2020 to £310 million in March 2021. The outstanding debt balance has been steadily declining since December 2016 and declining sharply since September 2018. Debt owed to government and debt which has no reasonable chance of being collected is written off.
Between 13 December 2018, when the compliance and arrears strategy work started, and 31 March 2021:
- the CSA has written to 251,900 parents with care to ask if they want a last attempt to be made to try to collect the debt owed to them – this includes all 134,700 parents with an eligible case on the CSA system and 117,200 parents with a case on the CMS system;
- 33,400 case groups have reached the debt collection stage. They have completed representation, parents have requested debt collection and attempts to collect the arrears have commenced. For 27,200 of those case groups, collection or write off of arrears is either partially or fully completed – £51.6 million of debt has been collected to date;
- 604,600 cases with non-paying historical debt have had their debt written off-system records showed these cases had a total debt value of £2,028.5 million, of which £854.7 million was owed to government only.
For the full statistics, click here.
30/7/21