CSA apologised after my complaint

November 16, 2012

I am a non resident father, who has without fail always paid maintenance through the CSA for my 12 year old daughter. Around two years ago now the CSA were responsible by their own admission of serious maladministration in the handling of my case. They carried out a reassessment due to transferring the case to their new computer system, and somehow calculated that I had overpaid maintenance by around £2000!

They therefore stopped taking payments from me for around six months to account for the overpayment. This caused obvious problems between me and my ex-partner which resulted in her stopping access to my daughter and me having to go to court to obtain a contact order which I eventually did successfully.

As a result of may partners complints to them the agency started an investigation, and despite reassuring me on numerous occasions that their calculations were correct, eventually after some 14 months of investigations and repeated misinformation they discovered their mistake and informed me that my payments were in fact in arrears by around £2000.

They initially demanded that I pay this amount in full and threatened me with an attachment to earnings order. After going through the torturous complaints procedure, including involving the ombudsman and my local MP they apologised for their mistake and offered me a ‘conciliatory payment of £50! They are however still demanding repayment of the arrears at a rate of £80 per month on top of my regular maintenance which I simply cannot afford.

I have been regularly paying around £40 each month off the arrears but have been informed that this is not acceptable and have again been threatened with an attachment to earnings order which could be up to 30% of my net income!

What can I do? Any help would be much appreciated.

Kind regards

Paul

Comments

  • Carol says:

    Are you on CSA1?

    The timescale to repay the debt is not set in law and is a management steer that they want it repaid in 2 years. Get your MP involved again and make a formal complaint. Let CSA know that the repayments will cause you financial hardship and let them know your income and expenditure for the whole house proving the hardship. My partner was paying on DEO at rate of 40% but after much arguing got it down to 25%.

  • chall says:

    Paul,

    As above.

    Remind the CSA the situation is directly due to their maladministration and not you being non compliant. Suggest a weekly figure you can reasonably afford.

    Your ex, due to the agencies maladministration should apply for payment from the them to put her back into the position she would have been in, had the error not occurred.

    The CSA is inexcusably slack in a number of areas. Sadly, your case is reflective of many, having arrears accrue due to no fault of your own.

    chall ~ afairercsaforall

  • Anon says:

    Stick to your guns, go back to your MP. You are paying arrears so they have a weak legal position and you should exploit that.

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