UK to Review Child Maintenance Formula After 25% of 92,700 Decisions Were Changed
Updated
Updated · BBC.com · May 15
UK to Review Child Maintenance Formula After 25% of 92,700 Decisions Were Changed
1 articles · Updated · BBC.com · May 15
92,700 reconsideration requests hit the Child Maintenance Service in 2025, and 21,400 decisions were changed, prompting the government to review a calculation model peers said is outdated and unfair.
More than 30 parents told the BBC they faced miscalculated arrears, wrongful deductions and long legal fights, often tied to child-support cases that had supposedly ended years or decades earlier.
John Hammond had £19,269 taken from his bank in 2020 before winning an appeal and court order for repayment, while Richard George recovered £18,800 after the CMS later accepted arrears should never have been carried over.
A 2025 House of Lords report said enforcement could be "random, abusive and unregulated" and argued the formula, largely unchanged for more than two decades, no longer reflects modern families.
The DWP says the CMS manages 800,000 arrangements for 720,000 paying parents and that assessment accuracy is close to 100%, but it does not publish appeal data on arrears notices or bank deductions.
Is the child support system failing the very children it was built to protect by targeting the wrong parents?
Decades-old government errors are emptying bank accounts today. How can citizens fight back against these bureaucratic ghosts?
When a state agency wrongly seizes your life savings, who is held accountable for the financial ruin?