Now CSA threatens fathers: We’ll take awayyour house, passport and driving licence
(And we’ll even raid your bank accounts)
FOR years it was treated almost as a joke because it was so poor at chasing up child maintenance payments.
Now the Child Support Agency has been given sweeping new powers and has a message for feckless fathers: ‘We are out to get you.’
As well as stripping money from personal bank accounts, the agency can force the sale of houses to fund child maintenance.
It will also have the power to deprive non-payers of their driving licences, suspend their passports and confiscate stocks and shares.
Last week, The Scottish Mail on Sunday was given exclusive access to the CSA centre in Falkirk, which handles all the UK’S deduction orders.
It still has to collect £3.8 billion in arrears and fines from across the UK, including £330 million from Scotland. The agency’s head of investigations, Linda Brown, said yesterday: ‘These irresponsible parents have to realise that there is nowhere to hide.’
In an office block tucked away behind a industrial estate, 400 civil servants are undertaking some of the most controversial work attempted in the UK, the only government officials allowed to delve into the personal financial details of thousands of British citizens.
Their targets are the parents who refuse to support their children – usually fathers, although around 5 per cent of the agency’s caseload includes wealthy mothers failing to pay up.
The CSA’S new powers have been phased in over the last three years and are only now being used to full effect.
The Falkirk task force has seized £12.5 million so far, mostly in the past year, and is confident it is now winning the battle against irresponsible non-paying parents.
But bosses acknowledge it has taken some of the most ruthless and extraordinary powers ever issued to a government department for this to be achieved.
In the agency’s first year, only 335 deduction orders were issued but last year the Falkirk centre took funds from 1,055 bank accounts in the space of ten months.
One father had £108,000 taken from his bank account, while another was stripped of almost £60,000 after failing to pay child support for 18 years – the money allowed his children to pay their way through university.
Agency spokesman Edward Davies said: ‘We are going to collect that money. Parents should not think they have got away with it, sitting on the sofa, watching their Sky TV – we are going to get them.’
Mr Davies stressed that every penny of unpaid child maintenance which could be collected,
‘The money really makes a difference’
would be collected and that nobody would get away with arrears simply because they were racked up many years ago.
He added: ‘In some cases we are dealing with the children of the children who were originally owed the money, but we are still going after it.’ The mother in the £60,000 case later wrote to the CSA, saying: ‘It’s been like winning the lottery. It’s very welcome assistance for the boys – both of whom are in higher education.
‘I’ve always worked but it’s been very hard to support them growing up. It’s been a struggle paying for everything on my own.’
One member of CSA staff, who did not want to be named, commented: ‘I am proud of what I do.
‘There is nothing to be ashamed of. I get money for children who really need it, whose mothers haven’t been able to give them much, haven’t been able to pay for their school uniforms or send them on school trips.
‘The money we get for them really makes a difference. It lifts them out of poverty.’