It is well known that the Child Support Agency (CSA) is a failing organisation.


In December 2006, the government delivered a White Paper called A new system of child maintenance. The White Paper says the CSA had been given an 'impossible task' and recommends that parents should be encouraged to make private arrangements so that this would result in a new organisation dealing with a smaller set of more difficult cases. The White Paper is based on the premise that the new organisation, the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC), will have a smaller caseload.



This ambition is now likely to fail. The family lawyers' group, Resolution, wanted to take many of the difficult cases away from the CSA and give the courts powers to make maintenance orders for children in divorce cases. The government has rejected this.



The White Paper gives no proposals for any private arrangement to be registered with C-MEC, so that if a private arrangement breaks down, it seems that a fresh application would have to be made to C-MEC - putting the parties in precisely the position that they would have been in had they made an application to C-MEC in the first instance.



The government proposal to charge the non-resident parent (not the parent with care) hardly seems to fit with the philosophy that a parent with care should be 'encouraged' to make a private arrangement. The White Paper proposes changing maintenance assessments on an annual basis using gross income details obtained from tax returns. Quite why a parent with care would be content to enter into a private arrangement that does not include this automatic annual review and which will not give rise to increased powers of enforcement is not explained.



The government proposes to increase the 'income disregard' for parents who are in receipt of state benefits. This will mean that where maintenance is paid, it will go directly to benefit children rather than being kept by the state. This step is widely applauded - but is likely to result in increased work for C-MEC, because, at present, most parents with care who are in receipt of state benefits have no financial interest in the outcome of an application. Once they have an interest, they are (quite rightly) likely to make proper demands on C-MEC to secure results.



There is a real worry that, from the outset, C-MEC will simply not be able to cope under the new demands that will be made of it.



What is most worrying is the proposal to give C-MEC powers of 'administrative enforcement' - without having to progress default cases through the courts. For ten consecutive years, the Audit Office has qualified its opinion on the CSA's accounts because of errors. In 2004/5, more than half of the full maintenance assessments reviewed were found to contain errors. The Audit Office report reflected that 65% of cases where a liability order was sought were inaccurate.



The CSA says it owes no 'duty of care', so it is not liable to pay compensation when errors occur - and despite this appalling history, the government wants to reduce the right of a citizen to have cases heard in court.



So here we are. We have a government that says the problems are not the fault of the CSA and its response is to remove essential rights of judicial scrutiny.



For the last 13 years, the CSA has proved itself to be an organisation incapable of listening to the concerns of parents with care. The fear is that the new organisation will aim to listen neither to parents with care nor non-resident parents.



Stephen Lawson is a partner at Cheshire firm Forshaws and a member of Resolution's national committee for maintenance and the CSA