Independent Case Examiner (ICE) decision on child support was fair, but Child Support Agency was slow to act on information

What happened

Ms A queried the nil assessment for child support maintenance in her case and, in response, gave the Agency details of the child's father's employment. The Agency revised the assessment, but only backdated it to when Ms A had first given the information after she complained. By then, however, arrears had accrued. The father then lost his job and the Agency was slow to deduct the reduced maintenance from his benefit. When the father started working again, the Agency was slow to impose a deduction from earnings order (DEO), so yet more arrears built up.

Ms A complained to ICE about the Agency's delay in securing maintenance via benefit deductions and the DEO, and ICE upheld her complaint. It asked the Agency to pay Ms A compensation of around £50 for the missed payments from benefit, and around £450 for the missed payments via the DEO that she would have received had the Agency actioned these sooner. Ms A was unhappy that ICE did not address the fact that the Agency had originally allowed arrears to build up  by failing to act on information she had given it about the father's employment, following the first nil assessment.

What we found

ICE had addressed the complaint that Ms A had put to it, which concerned the Agency's delay in securing maintenance from the father's benefit and via a DEO. ICE's findings and recommendations for compensation were appropriate and reasonable, and so we did not uphold that aspect of Ms A's complaint. However, the Agency had yet to address her complaint about its failure to act on the employment information she had initially supplied.

Putting it right

As a result, the Agency agreed to make Ms A an advance payment of over £500 for the arrears that had unnecessarily built up as a result of its delay, plus interest of around £25.