Recent figures released by the Child Support Agency (CSA) show that the Agency gave a stable performance in the final quarter of the last financial year.

 

In the year to March, a total of £1,150 million was collected or arranged by the Agency - up from £1,146m in the year to December 2010. A total of 867,800 children are currently benefiting from payments, up by 26,000 on the previous quarter. 77.6% of parents who were expected to make payments did so within the quarter, up from 75.8% in the previous quarter.

 

The CSA has achieved this performance level in part by putting effort into targeting parents who have gone three months or more without paying maintenance. As part of this enforcement effort, the Agency has:

• Increased its use of deduction orders from wages and bank accounts.
• Started possession action against more houses.
• Asked the courts to jail or disqualify from driving more parents who have refused to pay maintenance.

 

The stable performance will provide a solid platform for the child maintenance reforms announced recently by the Government, which will see the two current Child Support Agency schemes being replaced by a single statutory scheme.