Ongoing CSA problems

cheltenhamgal

My ex was paying the CSA via a deduction of earnings order but even then I only received approx. £300 out of the possible £600 I should have received. Then he was out of work and I was allocated £1.67 per week out of his benefit. I got this 3 times and have not had any money since 3rd June 2013.
At the beginning of October I got a letter advising me that as of 25th October I should be receiving £21.20 per week including arrears. I sent off a complaint letter which they received on 23rd October detailing all my conversations over the past year and lack of payments. I then received a letter back advising me that I would receive a response within 5 days.......still waiting.
So my questions are :
1. If he was receiving benefits then surely my £1.67 per week should have been guaranteed.
2. I thought they were legally bound to reply to complaints within a certain period of time.
3. Is there a higher body that I can complain to about my complaint if you get my drift.

Really makes my blood boil, with one thing and another this year has been financially hell, so I am having to explain now to my 12 year old daughter that Christmas just won't be happening this year yet we walk past him sat in the pub every weekend :mad:

HoneyNutLoop

cheltenhamgal wrote: »

My ex was paying the CSA via a deduction of earnings order but even then I only received approx. £300 out of the possible £600 I should have received.

Is £600 what your payment schedule said you should have received or is it an amount you worked out you think you should have received?

Then he was out of work and I was allocated £1.67 per week out of his benefit. I got this 3 times and have not had any money since 3rd June 2013.

Receiving £1.67 suggests your NRP has another 2 children with someone or 2 someone else's that also claim through CSA as you were getting 1/3 of the flat rate. So when he was on a DEO, depending on the arrears situation on each of the cases, that £300 you received may also have been 1/3 of what was collected.

At the beginning of October I got a letter advising me that as of 25th October I should be receiving £21.20 per week including arrears. I sent off a complaint letter which they received on 23rd October detailing all my conversations over the past year and lack of payments. I then received a letter back advising me that I would receive a response within 5 days.......still waiting.

At the bottom I attach a couple of links to the gov.uk website and their complaints booklet. Someone is meant to call you at the very minimum within 15 working days of receiving your complaint to discuss and agree how they plan resolving it. However, if your complaint is about the amount being £21.20 a week, you should prepare yourself that the amount may not be able to increase.

Assuming your ex owes roughly the same amount of arrears for each of his 3 children via CSA, the max that would be payable to you is 1/3 of 40% of his earnings. Your payments will therefore naturally be lower than if he only had to pay maintenance for your child. If £21.20 already represents your share of 40% of his earnings, then the payments can't increase until his earnings increase.

So my questions are :
1. If he was receiving benefits then surely my £1.67 per week should have been guaranteed.
Maintenance is never guaranteed and many things can prevent a deduction being made. If he failed to sign on one week, a fresh deduction request would have to be made after he did a rapid reclaim for JSA and it can take up to 6 weeks for the Job Centre to process and put in place each new request. This is just one example.

2. I thought they were legally bound to reply to complaints within a certain period of time.
Not legally bound, but they do have service targets - 15 working days to call and agree what they will do to resolve the complaint.

3. Is there a higher body that I can complain to about my complaint if you get my drift.
There are - see the attached links. However, you normally càn only direct your complaint further up the chain once you have received a response to your complaint. I would try calling them first about their lack of response.

Really makes my blood boil, with one thing and another this year has been financially hell, so I am having to explain now to my 12 year old daughter that Christmas just won't be happening this year yet we walk past him sat in the pub every weekend :mad:

This is a link to gov.uk which gives a brief outline of the complaint process:
https://www.gov.uk/complain-child-support-agency

This is a link to their booklet which gives more details:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/@benefits/documents/digitalasset/dg_198866.pdf

cheltenhamgal

Thanks for all the advice HoneyNutLoop, the £600 was based on £16.57 per week times however many weeks it was until he was out of work and claiming benefits which the CSA had agreed with me previously, just for my claim not the other two children.
And yes the NRP has two other children hence I was allocated a third of the flat benefit rate of £5 per week.

After 4 phonecalls chasing a response this week(part of my complaint the amount I have spent on phonecalls, I have since spoken to my caseworker who has advised me that since he started working again the money is not being collected by a DOE order but should be paid by the NRP which has not been happening.
The caseworker said that he was going to send it to enforcement and would call me at the latest 17th December to advise me if I would get a payment before Xmas.
So many contributing factors to take into consideration just to get the NRP to contribute towards his daughters upkeep.

HoneyNutLoop

Ah I see. I made an assumption on the first paragraph that you were receiving £300 a month previously not £300 in total. My apologies.

Also because your ex was on a DEO before going onto benefits, it is normal practise for the CSA to continue with this method of collecting even following a change of employment unless he volunteered to pay by DEO previously. Have they said why they are not trying a DEO again and instead are sending it to enforcement? Is your ex now self-employed?

If it is only your phone calls prompting them to take action and they were made from a landline not a mobile, you can ask them for a special payment to reimburse your costs.

[Deleted User]

I so wish that a change of employment after a deduction from earnings petition had been granted was true. This happened to my ex..., he changed jobs in July.., hasn't co-operated with the CSA at all, they have only in the last month started trying to trace him through the Inland Revenue to find out where he's working (4 months). I fully anticipate my ex to have changed jobs by the time we get to the attachment of earnings stage again (should be about a year if the inland revenue do take 16 weeks to reply and the CSA take another four months to take it to the next stage, then take their usual time to process stuff).