In 2011, the Department announced that it would close the old Child Support Agency (CSA) schemes and introduce the CMS. It decided, based on its analysis, that it would not be value for money to attempt to collect all the unpaid maintenance debt on the CSA schemes. The Department reduced the historic CSA debt relating to unpaid maintenance by £2.6 billion between December 2018 and March 2021 after deciding to largely write it off.64 Gingerbread, in its written evidence to us, told that it reg...

In 2011, the Department announced that it would close the old Child Support Agency (CSA) schemes and introduce the CMS. It decided, based on its analysis, that it would not be value for money to attempt to collect all the unpaid maintenance debt on the CSA schemes. The Department reduced the historic CSA debt relating to unpaid maintenance by £2.6 billion between December 2018 and March 2021 after deciding to largely write it off.64 Gingerbread, in its written evidence to us, told that it regularly heard from “single parents who were outraged at having debts written off, where the amount owed represented a lifetime of struggling with househol Type: conclusion | Number: 30 | Response status: not_addressed Government response: 6. PAC conclusion: The Department is too slow to take effective enforcement action, leaving children without maintenance for too long and allowing child maintenance arrears to grow. 6. PAC recommendation: The Department should, within one year: • conduct operatio