Hello
Over the years we’ve seen thousands of Mumsnet users talk about the difficulty of getting child maintenance payments from uncooperative exes - and lots of anger about how the Child Maintenance Service addresses the issue. (Some of you will remember this Guest Post from last year…)
So we’re really pleased to announce that we’ve teamed up with Gingerbread and the Good Law Project on a new campaign to fix the CMS - and specifically, we’re supporting their legal action against the Department for Work and Pensions. To quote Gingerbread:
‘Gingerbread, alongside the Good Law Project and Mumsnet, is supporting four women who have issued a Letter Before Claim to notify the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of their intention to seek Judicial Review due to the failure by the CMS to collect child maintenance payments from their children’s non-resident parent, leaving them and their children in financial difficulty and, in some cases, in poverty.’
‘It is a child’s legal right to be supported by both parents, and yet the service designed to protect this right is failing the children. Even before COVID-19, there were already £335 million in unpaid arrears and over 100,000 children across the country not receiving a penny in maintenance. Despite a vast array of enforcement powers, CMS have shown extreme negligence in actually using them, collecting an amount worth less than 10% of what is actually owed. It simply cannot be right that a government service can continually leave children of single parents in poverty without being held accountable.’
‘COVID-19 means this problem is getting worse by the day. CMS are running a skeleton service, meaning they are now as a rule not enforcing payment and are allowing paying parents to reduce or withdraw maintenance payment without any proper evidence. This has already resulted in more single parent families losing out on maintenance payment which quite simply, can be the difference between having food on the table or not. These children deserve better.”
If you’d like to support the campaign on social media, the hashtag is #FixtheCMS and you are very welcome to retweet Mumsnet’s tweet about it here.
We’ll be running a free clinic with Gingerbread next week where you can get advice on any child maintenance issues you’re currently having so please keep your eyes peeled for that and of course we’ll bring you any updates on the campaign.
Thanks
MNHQ