An Interim Maintainence Assessment from the CSA

July 6, 2012

In 1993 i recieved an Interim Maintainence Assessment, this was put in place because the forms that csa sent out to me were not filled in and sent back, (through no fault of my own, 2nd wife withheld them from me due to stress related issues,) I finally received the forms in 1995 and was given a Formal Assessment based on self employed income details and this amount was £0.00

They have now written to me and said that the case was closed in 2004. Although they had reduced my payments to zero due to my income, they are now trying to claim £7715 which they state are arrears from the period 1993 to 1995 and they are saying that they sent form CSA128 which stated that I still had arrears from the interim assessment, but they quote “unfortunatlely we are not able to provide you with a copy of this letter as a clerical copy is not held in our case papers”

My accountant was by this time handling all the paperwork and correspondence to them and he has not got this letter in his files either, and has no recollection of anything of this nature being sent. He wrote to them on 4 separate occasions in 1997 requesting that the Interim Maintainence Assessment be cancelled and the last letter saying “unless we hear from you to the contrary within the next seven days we will pressume that to be the case.”

We had no reply, until 5th May 2011 when they sent a letter that states “we previously decided that we would not collect £7715.39 that you owed for the period from 8/9/1993 to 17/4/1995 and we had made this decision because of your circumstances at that time,however we have now decided that you do have to pay this amount.Please call us now and pay” I have now requseted all clerical and compter records from them in the hope that we can get them to admit their mistakes and get the case closed.One of the pieces of correspondence from them states “a copy of the original letter dated 30th November 1997, is enclosed,but as it was sent to the wrong adress it has not been taken as issued until 27th March 1998.

We have tried to appeal all of this but have been told that it is out of time, Does anyone out there have any advice for me as to how I can proceed with this, also what is form CSA128, and how can it be out of time for appeal if, like our accountant, we were under the impression that as they didnt reply to his letters then the Interim assessment must have been cancelled as he had requested?

Thanks for reading my rant!!!

Comments

  • footprint says:

    The period you are talking about 1993 -1995 is the period to be included in the Arrears Write Off legislation for IMA’s soon to be introduced. You might which to seek legal advice on this issue. I suspect also if you were to mention to CSA enforcement that the arrears are from the period when the legislation changed regarding IMA,s the same period the new legislation is to cover they might back off

  • jay. says:

    My advice as we are going through the same thing, is go see your mp to get this sorted out. The csa are re-calculating my husband’s claim from 15 years ago on the mp’s requests, it does take time but keep on at it. Csa will keep on that you owe this money as they are too lazy to do the work or records not kept, so what computer says is gospel is correct to them. Good luck.

  • chall says:

    dasiy,

    It appears the CSA deferred the debt and are now reinstating it.

    Was the IMA that was in force during 8/9/1993 to 17/4/1995 ever converted to a proper assessment?

    When did you apply for your Data Protection File?

    chall ~ afairercsaforall

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