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Children: Maintenance

Answer

[holding answer 22 April 2009]: The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is responsible for the child maintenance system. I have therefore asked the Child Maintenance Commissioner to write to the hon. Member with the information requested.Letter from Stephen Geraghty:"In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about child maintenance, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Child Maintenance Commissioner as child maintenance is now the responsibility of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.""You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in how many and what proportion of child maintenance cases in North East Fife constituency payments were made (a) for the correct amount and (b) on time in each of the last five years [270857].""The information required to answer your question on the accuracy of maintenance payments collected from non-resident parents and issued to parents with care is not available. However the Child Support Agency Quarterly Summary of Statistics (QSS) contains the latest available information at a national level on the accuracy of maintenance assessments carried out by the Child Support Agency. The latest version of the QSS is available in the House of Commons library or online at:""http://www.childmaintenance.org/publications/statistics.html""It shows that in the 12 months to March 2009, 84% of current scheme assessments and 91% of old scheme calculations were accurate to the nearest penny.""The Agency aims to make maintenance payments to the parent with care within a week of receiving money from the non-resident parent. The latest information available for North East Fife constituency is set out in the attached table which shows the number and percentage of payments made to parents with care for each of the last five years and the time taken to make the payment. Over the last year, 97% of payments were made to parents with care within 7 days of the money arriving in the Agency's bank account compared to 90% in 2004/5."

Number and percentage of payments made to parents with care in the North East Fife constituency, for each of the last five years, and the time taken to make the payment
	Payments made within April to March each year:
	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09
	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
7 days and under	1,800	90	3,000	94	3,800	90	4,400	92	5,600	97
Over 7 days	200		200		400		400		200
Notes:
1. Only includes receipts and payments for cases held on the current computer system (CS2) and represents 70 per cent. of the Agency caseload. Management information is not available for the 30% of cases held on the old computer system (CSCS).
2. Information provided calculates time between receipt arriving in Agency's bank account and the Agency forwarding payment to the parent with care.
3. Payments allocated to parents with care in North East Fife by matching the residential postcode of the parent with care against the Office for National Statistics Postcode Directory.

"I hope you find this answer helpful."

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

492 c908W; 270857

Session

2008-09

Subjects

Children Maintenance Fife

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk