Hold the CMS Accountable: Demand Accuracy, Transparency, and Fairness

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) was created to ensure children receive financial support from both parents. However, its current policies and practices have resulted in thousands of paying parents facing unjust arrears, excessive fees, and financial hardship—often without any real cause.

Many of us have been forced into debt, considered unemployment as a reasonable choice, or suffered with severe mental health consequences, some of us even went on to take our own lives as a result. This is all down to CMS errors, the unreasonable ways in which they recover the arrears, and an unwillingness to acknowledge or correct them.

The Problem

The CMS operates with systemic failures that harm both paying parents and the children they claim to protect. As follows:

• Erroneous Arrears: The CMS frequently applies arrears unfairly, even when the evidence provided shows no liability for them.

•  Unresponsive & Incompetent Service: Requests for updates, changes, and complaints procedures take months to process. Case managers aren't dedicated to your case, leaving claims mismanaged, and innacuracies being made.

• Financial Motivation to Penalize Paying Parents: The CMS profits from placing parents on the collect and pay system, taking 20% from paying parents and 4% from receiving parents—money that should go to our children. 

• Unreasonable Enforcement Powers: Decisions are made without court oversight. This has allowed the CMS to issue unaffordable Deduction from Earnings Orders (DEOs) without considering a parent's ability to pay, and without the need for court approval.

• Lack of Accountability: The CMS ignores relevant evidence, refuses to correct mistakes, and hides behind rigid internal policies that prioritize revenue and their own self-serving protection. Ignorance and lack of accountability over fairness, and over the needs of the children should not be acceptable. 

• Recipient Parents Should NOT Dictate Collect and Pay Status: Currently a paying parent can only leave the collect and pay system with the recipient parent’s approval. This allows, and promotes, financial control and abuse by the recipient parent. No parent should have the power to keep another on an excessive fee-based system when they are paying in full, and on time.

• Reform the 25% income border: The Child Maintenance Service will only reduce your income, or increase it, if your income alters by 25%. This leaves people paying more, or sometimes less than they should. This opens the door for contention and errors being made, and the CMS should ALWAYS consider actual incomes. 

What Needs to Change?

We demand immediate reform to ensure fairness, accountability, and accuracy within the CMS. We also demand the removal of tools that can be used to abuse the paying parents by the recipient parents. If as paying parents we conform, we should not be held liable for extended fees by former partners, and recipient parents. Direct pay should ALWAYS be an option. 

Specifically, we call for:

• Accurate Financial Records: The CMS must ensure all income and arrears calculations are correct, and that they reflect real financial situations.

• Fair Recovery Methods: Enforcement actions should consider the impact on paying parents and the welfare of their children.

• Appropriate Investigation of Non-Paying Parents: Those who genuinely avoid supporting their children should be investigated in an evidence-based process, not taken on the word of the recipient parent. If a payment has been reported missed, or late, proof should be accepted otherwise. Currently, too many cases are being put into Collect and Pay based on issues that didn't exist. Evidence MUST be considered before action in these cases. 

• Reasonable Arrears Repayment Plans: The CMS must consider a parent's financial situation before enforcing unaffordable repayment terms. The CMS should extend its repayment period - if ongoing payments are being made, the need for the arrears is not urgent enough to destroy a parent financially. 

• Reform of Collect and Pay: Abolish the requirement for the recipient parents approval to switch to Direct Pay. Remove parents from Collect and Pay after three consecutive successful payments. Reduce the excessive 24% fee, which unfairly takes money from the children. If you're taking 20% from us, why would you also need to deduct 4% from the children? 

• Improved Response Times: The CMS must process changes, complaints, and appeals within reasonable time frames,ensuring consistency and accuracy. If we are expected to do so, then so should the service. 

• Court & Tribunal Oversight: The CMS should be held accountable to UK laws, not just internal policies, with quicker access to appeals and tribunals to hold them accountable. This is a billion pound issue, this isn't something that should be dealt with by internal complaints. As paying parents, and recipient parents in some circumstances, we're having to wait years for complaint resolutions, yet they'll give us several half-hearted answers and tell us the complaint is closed. 

Why This Matters

The current CMS system is not just broken—it is causing real harm. Many parents are being financially abused due to administrative failures and policies designed to increase CMS revenue rather than protect the children. If we do not demand change now, more families will suffer under a system that has lost sight of its true purpose.

Sign this petition and demand that the Child Maintenance Service is held accountable. Our children deserve better.