Child Maintenance Service statistics

In the most recent statistics which cover the 2022/23 financial year, the Department for Work and Pensions estimated there were 2.4 million separated families in Great Britain, and 3.8 million children living in separated families.

Around 59% of separated families were estimated to have a child maintenance arrangement. The Child Maintenance Service was the sole organiser of maintenance for around 16% of separated families.

This briefing sets out statistics for the Child Maintenance Service which operates in England, Scotland and Wales. Section 5 provides statistics on the similar, but separate, scheme in Northern Ireland.

What is child maintenance?

Parents have financial responsibility for their children, even if they are separated. Child maintenance is a financial arrangement between a parent a child does not normally live with (the non-resident parent or paying parent) and the person who lives with the child and who usually provides day-to-day care for them (the person with care).

It is not compulsory to have a formal child maintenance arrangement. Separated parents can arrange child maintenance themselves under a ‘family-based arrangement’. Where parents cannot agree, maintenance can be arranged through the government’s statutory service: the Child Maintenance Service.

How many people are using the Child Maintenance Service?

The Department for Work and Pensions publishes quarterly figures on Child Maintenance Service arrangements. In the quarter ending March 2024, there were around 658,000 paying parents on Child Maintenance Service arrangements. Note, a paying parent can have multiple child maintenance arrangements.

For the same quarter, there were around 986,000 children covered.

Do paying parents comply with child maintenance?

The default option for a child maintenance case is to place it on the Child Maintenance Service’s direct pay service. This is where the service calculates the rate at which maintenance should be paid, but payments are made between parents.

The other service available is collect and pay, where the service additionally collects and passes on payments. If payments are missed under direct pay, the person with care must inform the Child Maintenance Service, and a case may be moved to collect and pay. If payments are missed under collect and pay, the service will act, and the person with care does not need to report it.

As the service is involved in the entire transaction for collect and pay, it has information on whether these payments are made in full and on time. Of the arrangements on collect and pay, 69% of parents contributed a form of payment in the quarter ending March 2024. The DWP defines this as compliance.

For the direct pay service, there is less information on how these arrangements work in practice after the initial calculation. The Department for Work and Pensions conducted a survey of direct pay users between 2017 and 2019. It found three months after a direct pay calculation, 85% of parents with care said they either had or were setting up a child maintenance arrangement. This fell to 81% after 13 months from the calculation.

How often are enforcement powers used?

There is a spectrum of powers available to the Child Maintenance Service to collect arrears. These are either collection actions (measures the service can take under its own initiative), or enforcement powers (measures that can only be taken when the service obtains a “liability order” from the Court).

The number of deduction orders (either a lump sum or regular deductions that are made from bank accounts) in process for the quarter ending March 2024 reached 4,700, collecting £4.0m. In the same quarter, the total number of paying parents using the collect and pay service with a deduction from earnings order or deduction from earnings request was around 51,500, of which 88% were compliant.

Also in the quarter ending March 2024, there were 53 prison sentences in relation to unpaid maintenance in England and Wales, all of which were suspended. In Scotland for the same quarter, there were no sanctions outcomes.