Constant mishandling of my case by the CSA

February 5, 2012

The CSA are currently doing work on my case to verify the amount of arrears THEY owe to ME because they’d been UNDERPAYING me and sending money that is mine to the Sec of State. I have been told that until this work is complete I will not get my regular maintenance in case they OVERPAY me. I haven’t had a payment since Oct 2011 so I am now owed 3 months worth of payments from them amounting to just over £300 plus the arrears which are £1305.42. I find it disgusting that they are allowed to withhold my money in case of an overpayment when in fact they have been underpaying me for months possibly years.

I have put in a complaint as I believe this is fundamentally wrong. The complaints wworker who called me last week agreed that they should not be withholding my regular maintenance as it is supposed to be paid to me regularly and has nothing to do with the arrears that have occurred through no fault of mine or in fact my ex husband, he also said that until the case worker had missed the deadline there was nothing the complaints department could do to hurry the work along.

The deadline for this work being complete was originally 27/01/2012 but last week I was informed when I called to check on the progress of this work that it had been passed to another “service excellence team”, (A term I find hilarious as there is no service excellence from the CSA whatsoever), for them to do more work on this and because of this the deadline had changed and it could be another 12 weeks before it might be completed. I told them this was unacceptable and no way would I be waiting that long for it. This would take it to 6 months with no regular maintenance and still no arrears. I have since had a call from the CSA from the complaints department to say they are now taking over the work as a manager had registered a complaint as the case is going around in circles.

I was told I would have a phone call within 2 working days from the complaints worker who was allocated the case. It is now 3 days and the call has not come as yet, at time of writing this they close for today in 45 minutes so I won’t hold my breath that it will come today, even though I was assured when I called up this morning that I would be contacted by the end of today.

At no time was I contacted to tell me about the fact that my money was going to be withheld or to inform me of these arrears owing to me, the only reason I found out about the arrears was due to receiving a new payment schedule and the arrears were detailed on there. It was not clearly detailed where the arrears had come from and it took 4 or 5 phone calls to verify they were owed to me by the CSA and not my ex husband.

I had to put in a complaint in Feb 2011 as yet again they withheld money for a couple of months while they did an account breakdown. My complaint was upheld and I was told that if in the future any work was to be done on my case I would still receive my mormal regular maintenance, this happened for a few months and then I was back to square one again with me having to call every month to ask them to release my maintenance. Told on several occasions that yes it had been released only to find out it had not and the call handler who informed me it had been released would’ve seen on their computer system that was not the case therefore they were lying to me. Nobody at the CSA seems to want to be held accountable for the constant errors and mishandling of my case and quite frankly i’m sick of it.

I have wrote to the Secretary of State myself and also have an appointment with my MP tomorrow morning to see if I can get this matter sorted as it is causing me alot of stress, upset and sleepless nights trying to resolve this matter and it feels like i’m banging my head against a brick wall.

Comments

  • Allie says:

    You have my total sympathy – I am currently in the midst of an almost identical situation with the CSA. I too, enlisted the help of my local MP and his PA has been very helpful in kicking the CSA up the backside to actually DO something. She also ensured that one person at the agency is responsible for sorting the mess out and although it is still ongoing, they are about to release one of my three payments…not great, but something at least. I think the CSA hope that people will get so fed up that they’ll give up eventually but, in my case anyway – they are very wrong, I will keep on until I get what THEY owe me. After all, why should our children go without because of their incompetance? Don’t give up and I wish you lots of luck x

  • j says:

    So money that is due to you is in fact going to the government instead? “all in it togetrher”? They seem to be dont they.

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