Parents living abroad escape CSA
May 5, 2008
According to research by the Conservatives, more than 6,200 non-resident parents are living abroad, and only a quarter of them are paying through the child support agency. This means that around 5,000 parents are escaping paying for their children, with a total debt of over £26,000,000.
The research says that parents living outside the UK are getting away without paying far more than parents living in the country.
Figures also reveal that the CSA are currently owed £3.7 Billion, which represents an increase of £200 Million from the previous year, and an increase of £1.4 Billion since the year 2000.
The CSA say that less than half of the money they are owed is actually recoverable, meaning they have written off over £2 Billion. The money ‘owed’ to the CSA is increasing at approximately £16 Million each month, almost £200 Million every year. This money is owed by a staggering 137,700 uncleared cases.
You can read the CSA Quarterly Statistics here.
The new CSA scheme has a worse set of results than the previous scheme. Of this new scheme, only 65% of cases actually pay where 72% paid through the old system. Mistakes are rife as well with only 85% of calculations are deemed accurate. The old system saw 92% of maintenance calculations deemed accurate.
The worse thing of all is that the CSA costs over £500 Million per year to run, which is twice what it cost in 1997.
Chris Grayling, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said:
It is now 11 years since this Government first promised to get to grips with the CSA and each year that goes by it seems that more and more families get caught up in a system that’s just not working. The Government has promised great plans for reform but the families that have experienced problems in the last few years will remain sceptical.
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