When Child Maintenance Fails, Children Pay: What BBC Panorama Reveals About the CMS

Child maintenance is not a favour to the parent who receives it. It is not a reward for good co-parenting, a bargaining chip in a dispute about contact or an optional contribution to be made when convenient. It is money for a child’s food, home, clothes, heating, travel, education and ordinary life.

That is why the recent BBC Panorama investigation into the Child Maintenance Service has caused such anger. The programme did not reveal one simple problem. It showed a system capable of moving far too slowly when a parent does not pay—and of acting with devastating force when its own calculation is wrong.

Those failures may look like opposites. They are not. They arise from the same institutional weaknesses: inaccurate information, fragmented decision-making, long periods without effective action, poor communication and no reliable sense that one person owns the case from beginning to end.

A child cannot eat an arrears figure. A parent cannot correct an unlawful demand with another unanswered telephone call.

Two parents, two failures, one system

Panorama reported the experience of Katy, whose former partner was expected to pay more than £330 a month. Her arrears approached £10,000. She described using food banks, cutting out activities for the children and falling into debt herself. According to the BBC, the CMS said in March 2025 that it would seek a liability order, but the process remained unresolved more than a year later. The service ultimately apologised and made a consolatory payment.

The programme also featured Gerry, a paying parent whose case was wrongly recorded as including a third child who was not his. He eventually succeeded at tribunal, but the consequences did not simply disappear. The BBC reported that disputed arrears remained in the system, his monthly demand rose sharply and he was told to seek recovery of some payments himself. The CMS apologised to him too.

It would be easy to turn these stories into another gendered contest: receiving parents against paying parents; mothers against fathers. That would miss the point. Official figures show that 93% of paying parents recorded by the CMS are male, so the effects of non-payment and enforcement will often be gendered. But a child-centred system must be able to hold two truths at once:

• children and their primary carers suffer real hardship when maintenance is not paid or enforced; and
• paying parents can suffer serious financial and psychological harm when decisions are inaccurate and errors are not corrected promptly.

Accuracy is not an obstacle to enforcement. It is what gives enforcement legitimacy. The CMS should be relentless about collecting the right amount from the right person—and equally relentless about correcting a mistake.

The scale behind the headlines

The latest official CMS statistics, to March 2026, show how many families depend on the service.

Of approximately 240,000 paying parents due to pay through Collect & Pay during the quarter, 57,000—23%—paid nothing. In total, £112.8 million was scheduled through Collect & Pay; £86.5 million was paid and £26.3 million was not.

Those figures still do not show the full extent of missed maintenance. The CMS does not monitor payment compliance under Direct Pay, where money passes between parents. At the end of March 2026, 55% of arrangements were on Direct Pay. The receiving parent has to identify and report non-payment before CMS enforcement can begin.

Gingerbread, which appeared in the Panorama investigation, says accumulated unpaid child-maintenance arrears exceed £790 million. The charity also argues that an effective maintenance system could reduce child poverty substantially. Whatever figure is used, the lived consequence is the same: rent, food and school costs do not pause while enforcement files move between teams.

What the CMS can do—and why families still wait

The CMS has substantial powers. On Collect & Pay it may deduct money from earnings, benefits, pensions or bank accounts. It can seek a liability order and, after that, use enforcement agents, register a debt, seek an order for sale, or apply for sanctions such as disqualification from driving or holding a passport. Imprisonment is available in the most serious cases.

Yet a power on paper is not the same as money in a child’s home. Enforcement may stall because the paying parent’s income, employment, assets or address cannot be verified; because the case is still on Direct Pay; because a court order is required; or because a growing debt has been divided between different stages of action. Receiving parents are often told that the CMS cannot disclose operational detail. That may protect the integrity of enforcement, but silence without a meaningful timetable leaves families unable to plan.

The House of Lords Public Services Committee’s October 2025 report, Reforming the Child Maintenance Service, found significant delays and called for faster liability orders and better information for receiving parents. The Committee described the calculation as insufficiently fair and transparent and warned that enforcement can be both too weak against genuine avoidance and wrongly directed where the underlying decision is flawed.

Parliament passed the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023 to allow administrative liability orders without first applying to court. However, in a written answer on 18 March 2026, the Government confirmed that secondary legislation was still required. It said the reform could reduce a process of up to 22 weeks to around six weeks once operational. Nearly three years after Royal Assent, families were still waiting for the promised acceleration.

Direct Pay, Collect & Pay and a fee imposed on the child’s household

The 4% deduction is particularly difficult to justify where a receiving parent has been moved to Collect & Pay because the other parent did not comply. It means the child’s household receives less because it needed the state to enforce a legal liability. The Government plans eventually to replace Direct Pay with a single monitored service and reduce the fee for receiving parents to 2%, while retaining a 20% charge for non-compliant paying parents. Primary legislation is required and implementation has been described as dependent on the parliamentary timetable.

Monitoring every statutory arrangement could expose missed payments much earlier. But transferring hundreds of thousands of cases into a more interventionist service without sufficient staff, technology and safeguards could simply move the bottleneck. Reform must be judged by the amount paid to children in full and on time—not by the number of cases migrated to a new administrative category.

When non-payment becomes economic abuse

Not every missed payment is domestic abuse. Income can fall, employment can end and genuine mistakes occur. A parent who cannot pay should tell the CMS immediately, provide accurate evidence and continue paying what they can in accordance with any revised direction.

But deliberate non-payment can also form part of a wider pattern of control after separation. The statutory guidance under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 expressly identifies refusing to make required child-maintenance payments as a possible example of economic abuse. Context, purpose, pattern and impact all matter.

Maintenance may be withheld to punish a former partner, force continued contact, create dependence, generate debt or make legal proceedings unaffordable. The children experience the consequences even where the money is formally owed to the receiving parent. The same statutory guidance recognises that economic abuse can deprive children of essentials and contribute to child poverty.

A safe service must therefore understand that asking a victim-survivor to chase the other parent, negotiate payments or repeatedly prove non-compliance may expose them to further control. The process should reduce contact and conflict, not create new opportunities for it.

If you are owed child maintenance

When payments are missing, build a clear paper trail early. A structured record is much more useful than a folder of unexplained screenshots.

1. Report the missed or short payment through your online CMS account. If you use Direct Pay, ask to move to Collect & Pay. Keep the confirmation and date.
2. Preserve proof. Keep bank statements, the CMS payment schedule, letters, online messages and a simple table showing each amount due, paid and outstanding. Redact unrelated banking information when sharing documents.
3. Ask for the arrears position in writing. Request the amount the CMS accepts is outstanding, the periods covered, whether the case is in collection or enforcement, and the next review date.
4. Ask focused questions. Which available power has been considered? Is an employer, bank account or benefit known? Is a liability order required? What information is missing? What is the expected next procedural step?
5. Use the formal complaints process for delay or service failure. State what should have happened, what actually happened, the financial and personal impact, and the practical remedy sought. Ask for correction, action, a written explanation and appropriate redress.
6. Escalate after the final response. The Independent Case Examiner can consider maladministration, excessive delay and poor service. It must generally be contacted within six months of the final response that signposts you to ICE.
7. Seek immediate financial and safety support where needed. A CMS complaint will not resolve today’s shortage of food, rent or energy. Use local welfare assistance, benefits and debt advice, and specialist domestic-abuse support where the non-payment forms part of a pattern of control.

If you are on Collect & Pay, official guidance says the CMS should act automatically when a payment is not made in full and on time. It may not disclose every enforcement detail. That does not prevent you from asking for a clear account of the arrears, recorded decisions, outstanding information and when the case will next be reviewed.

If the CMS amount or arrears figure is wrong

A wrong calculation usually requires a legal challenge; poor administration usually requires a complaint. A disputed arrears balance can involve both—for example, an incorrect liability decision and a payment that was never credited. The routes are not interchangeable, and pursuing one does not safely preserve the deadline for the other.

If another source of income or a relevant expense has not been taken into account, a parent may also need to ask for a variation. Evidence might include HMRC records, payslips, company information, pension or rental income, proof of overnight care, evidence concerning other qualifying children, and a properly referenced record of direct payments.

Do not assume that repeatedly telephoning the CMS extends an appeal deadline. Identify the decision, its date, the precise factual or legal error and the outcome sought. Unless the CMS changes the liability, stopping payment unilaterally can create further arrears and enforcement. If you cannot pay, report the change immediately rather than waiting for the annual review.

What meaningful reform should look like

The Government’s proposed single monitored service is a serious acknowledgement that Direct Pay leaves a large compliance gap. It is not, by itself, a complete solution. JSH Law believes meaningful reform should include:

• outcomes measured from the child’s perspective: how much of the correct liability reached the child, in full and on time;
• automatic monitoring and early intervention: without placing the whole burden of reporting on the receiving parent;
• published enforcement standards: clear stages, target times and written reasons where action cannot progress;
• rapid liability orders with safeguards: administrative enforcement must be implemented, but paired with an effective route to correct mistaken identity, wrong income and other errors before disproportionate harm occurs;
• a specialist domestic-abuse pathway: safe communication, no requirement for unnecessary direct contact and staff trained to recognise post-separation economic abuse;
• no collection deduction from the child’s household where statutory collection is necessary because of non-compliance;
• one accountable case owner for complex cases: so that parents do not have to retell years of history to each new decision-maker; and
• transparent correction and redress: when the CMS gets a case wrong, it should restore the correct position promptly and address the foreseeable loss its error caused.

There must also be intellectual honesty about enforcement. “Tougher powers” make attractive headlines, but a power is only useful if the service has accurate data, applies it to the correct person and acts within a timeframe that matters to a child. The answer to weak enforcement is not careless enforcement. The answer to administrative error is not paralysis.

The principle is simple

Children should not be pushed into poverty because a parent will not pay. Receiving parents should not have to become investigators, debt collectors and full-time complaint handlers to obtain money already assessed as due. Paying parents should not lose income, stability or mental health because an obvious error survives every attempt to correct it.

A credible Child Maintenance Service must act quickly where liability is clear, listen carefully where it is disputed and correct itself without forcing a family through years of escalation.

Legal information notice: This article provides general information about the Child Maintenance Service in England, Scotland and Wales as reviewed on 9 October 2026. Northern Ireland has a separate child-maintenance service and appeal procedure. This is not legal advice and should not be relied upon as a substitute for advice on the facts of an individual case. Time limits can be strict. If a child or adult is at immediate risk, call 999.