The government’s child maintenance system is haemorrhaging cash and trust, with new figures showing it wrongly took or withheld over £20,000 from some parents. One father told this newsroom the system “took money I didn’t owe” and left him unable to pay rent.
Internal documents seen by this newsroom reveal that the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) made errors in calculating payments for at least 1,200 families over the past year. Errors exceeding £5,000 were common. In one case, a single mother was underpaid by £18,000 over three years because the CMS failed to account for her ex-partner’s bonus income.
The CMS, a branch of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), is supposed to ensure children receive financial support from absent parents. But its own records show it routinely fails to update income details, leading to over- or underpayments. A whistleblower inside the DWP told me the system is “held together with sticky tape” and that managers ignore complaints to hit targets.
“They took money I didn’t owe,” said James, a father from Birmingham who asked to use only his first name. “I had a repayment schedule in place, but they doubled it without telling me. They took £400 from my wages, and I couldn’t pay my landlord. I’m still trying to get it back.”
James is one of hundreds of parents who contacted this newsroom after we published initial findings. The CMS has now admitted that a “technical glitch” caused repeated errors in calculating arrears for certain cases. But campaigners say the problem is not technical, it’s systemic.
“The CMS has been failing children for years,” said Sarah Griffiths, policy officer at Gingerbread, a charity for single parents. “These aren’t glitches. They are a refusal to invest in proper oversight and a culture of blame where honest parents are treated like criminals.”
The DWP says it has corrected most errors and is reviewing its procedures. A spokesperson told me: “We take errors seriously and are working to resolve outstanding issues. The majority of cases are now correct, and we have improved training for staff.”
But the documents tell a different story. Internal emails show that managers were warned about faulty calculations months before the public was told. In one email, a senior official wrote: “We need to fix the module before it hits the media.” That fix came too late for parents like James.
For now, the CMS continues to demand payments based on flawed numbers. Parents who challenge the figures often face months of phone calls and paperwork. Some give up. Others go into debt.
This is not a minor administrative error. It is a breach of trust. The Child Maintenance Service was created to protect children from poverty. Instead, it is punishing their parents. And the DWP’s response, as ever, is to blame the computer.
