Sponsored by
Shock at unpaid CSA bills in Leeds and Wakefield
Absent parents in Leeds and Wakefield owe £81million in child maintenance.
Figures obtained by the YEP reveal that absent parents in Leeds owe £49,437,000 in child maintenance payments.
Parents in Wakefield also owed a further £31,622,000 in arrears to the Child Support Agency.
Today Fiona Weir, chief executive of single-parent charity Gingerbread, has called for parents to live up to their responsibilities.
She said: “The latest figures on the large child maintenance arrears in Wakefield and Leeds are a sad reminder that there are some non-resident parents who are failing to live up to their responsibilities as parents to continue to support their children – whatever their relationship, or lack of it, with their former partner.
“Relationships may end, but responsibility for children continues.”
The debt mountain, which has never been written off, has built up across the two cities since 1993.
A spokesman from the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, which is now in charge of the Child Support Agency, said that despite measures to claw back the cash some parents are still not taking responsibility of their children.
Measures that are in place include deducting money straight out of parents’ bank accounts and they have even threatened to take away people’s homes as a last resort.
He added: “We have reduced that total but there are still parents that are not taking responsibility.
“As well as stepping everything up there will be a brand new computer system connected to HMRC for the first time.
“If parents resist to pay up there will be penalty fees.”
Figures show that 11,260 children in Leeds and a further 6,840 children in Wakefield are benefiting from payments from the agency.
It helps to ensure that parents who live apart meet their financial responsibilities to their children by calculating and collecting child maintenance payments,
Over the last year the agency was responsible for collecting and arranging payments totalling £13,744,000 from parents in Leeds.
It also collected an additional £9,230,000 in Wakefield from parents who weren’t able to arrange their own maintenance plans.
Over £1,500,000 was clawed back from the agency in arrears in Leeds and £941,000 in arrears in Wakefield over the last year.
Statistics show that more than one in five parents in Yorkshire and the Humber still aren’t getting regular maintenance payments for their children from the Child Support Agency.
The news comes after the Government revealed proposals to charge single parents for using the Child Support Agency.
Work and pensions minister Maria Miller said the system was “broken”.
She added: “The sad fact is that half of children from separated families have no maintenance arrangement in place at all.”
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Leeds
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: East
Comments
There are 2 comments to this article
Page 1 of 1
Leedsresident
Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 03:52 PMMy friend's x-husband owes her thousands in maintenance but despite her giving the CSA his address, car reg, phone number and national insurance number she has never received a penny in 9 years, and still the CSA can't get money from him despite him working. I'm sure the CSA staff do what they can but they are constrained by too much red tape and 'procedure' and fewer and fewer staff to deal with it.
stevem28
Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 02:33 PMIf anyone believes what the CSA say they are mad.They come up with imaginary figures that us so called absent dads have to pay and they will not say how they come to make the figures up and when you argue your case against them they just put an attachment to earnings order on you and the courts in this country take there side no matter if they are right or wrong.I have paid thousands and thousands to the corrupt CSA but because they are a goverment body you can not challenge them in court.YES I HAVE TRIED.They turned up at court with no paper work and the judge took there word against mine when I had paper work with me.They somehow manage to lose paperwork when challenged and they make you apply to Newcastle for the paper work and when it turns up it is around 500 yes 500 sheets of A4.The real CSA has caused so much stress and suicides to the ones who are paying yet paying over the odds to cover for the ones they dont chase who get away with out paying.And they say they dont take your new partners wage into consideration which is another lie has they do.They have taken my wifes wage into consideration and they take court action if you dont tell them. The CSA should be shut down.
Page 1 of 1
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.