The CSA’s bizarre reasons not to pay out arrears witheld from NRP

November 29, 2013

This is quite literally a copy of the umpteenth complaint I just made on the CSA’s on line complaint form which can be found on
https://www2.dwp.gov.uk/csa/v2/en/complaint.asp
The form is easy to use and  you usually get some sort of response, although seldom the one you hoped for.

 

Acknowledgement Message sent on 29/12/2012 17:05:42.

Your message reads:

We were given a curtsy call that a change of circumstances above was passed to Finance who were going to do yet another breakdown of arrears, rather than increasing the £5 amount paid by the NRP towards arrears of £12,000. We were told this could take up to 21 weeks. This of course is totally unacceptable for a case which has been closed since July 2007! The last thing we needed is yet another CSA person to waste taxpayers money to work out what the arrears should be! The CSA have done this three times already over the past 5 years since the case was closed and I have received pages and pages of spreadsheet printouts, every time resulting in an insignificantly different amount being owed to my wife  by the NRP, who is now in full time employment. This means either your staff is incompetent or the rules too complex. 

Roll forward the clock to June 2013 and my wife is promised full payment of arrears dating back to when the case was closed in July 2007 in 24 instalments of £456.66 starting June 15th 2013

Only one payment was received on August 1st, so this lead to the next complaint of today below:

Acknowledgement Message sent on 02/10/2013 11:40:42

Thank you for your e-mail to the Child Support Agency.
Your message reads: Promised payments of £456.66 on 01/09/2013 and 01/10/2013 were not received. CSA staff confirm they can see the received payments from the NRP’s employer on their system, but they cannot release these payments because they have to do yet another breakdown of arrears first [SIC]. They say they cannot find any of the five previous detailed arrears breakdowns performed, as they were never recorded on the system. If this is not a sure sign of maladministration, what is? Anyway why should my wife be punished by withholding her payments because of incompetent CSA staff who lose files and forget to update records. Repeating ‘We have to’ is not a defence. It is not an excuse to withhold payments that do not belong to the CSA. What it is, is common theft and piling insult after insult on injury after injury. Under Freedom Of Information Act rules, please supply me with the applicable regulation, that says that if the CSA misfiles a detailed breakdown of arrears – one of many they have done over times without actually pursuing these arrears – the PWC has to be withheld the money finally paid in by the NRP after six years in good faith. How does this benefit anyone except CSA coffers?

Comments

  • Marcus Lasance says:

    Not sure why CSAhell staff decided to rerun this story two months later? I did not ask for this. News must be slow? Anyway an update on the story is that my October complaint resulted in three payments being released within October and the November payment actually arrived on time. Moral of the story: it pays to persist pestering the CSA to comply but don’t hold your breath….

  • News isn’t slow, Marcus. If news was slow stories would go on straight away. Sometimes we have a huge backlog of emails and posts, that’s what comes through having thousands of visitors each day.

  • >