Nakalama John
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is under intense scrutiny after a BBC News Investigations report revealed a disturbing pattern of severe administrative errors, leading to substantial sums of money being wrongly seized from parents. Many of these issues are tied to historic child support arrangements, long believed to be settled, and have plunged individuals into profound financial and emotional distress. The cases highlighted expose a system described by some as "random, abusive, and unregulated," punishing the innocent and ignoring genuine issues of child maintenance avoidance.
John Hammond, a 56-year-old maths teacher from Peterborough, experienced this systemic failure firsthand. Weeks into his new teaching role, enjoying a lunch break chat with colleagues, a routine check of his banking app turned his world upside down. Instead of his expected first month’s wages, he discovered a staggering £20,000 had been taken from his account by the CMS. The shock was immediate and physical; he recounted, "I was so shocked that I couldn’t stop shaking. Other teachers could see something was wrong and asked what was the matter." For Hammond, whose children were 25 and 28, with his child support arrangement concluded over a decade prior, the deduction was incomprehensible. "I was convinced that it was a scam," he stated, grappling with the sudden, inexplicable loss of such a significant sum.
Hammond’s ordeal, which began with what he believed was a resolved issue from the now-defunct Child Support Agency (CSA) in 2002, spiralled into a bureaucratic nightmare. That year, he received a letter from the CSA stating he owed £947, but crucially, that they would not collect it at his ex-wife’s request. He considered the matter closed. However, in 2019, a letter from the CMS arrived, demanding nearly £19,000. "I was in complete shock," Hammond said, instantly disputing the claim and providing copies of his old correspondence. His attempts to resolve the issue were met with frustration. "You phone up and explain everything," he described, "They tell you they can’t access your account or that the computer says something different. It felt like banging your head against a wall." Despite his ongoing challenge, the CMS proceeded to obtain interim and final lump sum deduction orders, ultimately seizing £19,269 from his bank account in December 2020.
It took Hammond a year to win his appeal. A county court judge not only ordered the full sum to be returned but also awarded him £8,000 in legal costs. Yet, the victory felt hollow. He had spent £14,055 on legal fees, leaving him over £6,000 out of pocket even after the court ruling. "Even when you’re proved right it doesn’t feel like justice," Hammond lamented. "It just feels like you’ve survived it." The emotional and financial toll of fighting an erroneous claim, which should never have arisen, left deep scars. The DWP, which runs the CMS, later acknowledged in correspondence seen by the BBC that it was "unable to ascertain why" Hammond was told he owed £19,000, a stark admission of administrative failure.
John Hammond’s experience is far from isolated. Over 30 parents have contacted BBC Your Voice, sharing similar stories of miscalculated child maintenance arrears, funds wrongly taken from wages or bank accounts, and gruelling, protracted legal battles with the CMS. The BBC’s investigation reveals that many of these reported problems are directly linked to child support arrangements that concluded many years, or even decades, ago, highlighting systemic issues in the transition and data management between the old CSA and the current CMS, which replaced it in 2012.
Richard George, 63, a founder director of a fintech startup company from Devon, is another victim of these errors. He, too, discovered £18,800 had been taken from his bank by the CMS. "I won’t forget it, how I felt – it triggered in me the most horrendous adrenaline shock," George recounted, describing the profound sense of violation. "It’s a bit like your last money, everything you’ve got left, is taken by a scammer. That’s what I thought had happened." George’s ordeal began in 2016 when an appeal tribunal overturned a CSA decision against him, effectively writing off over £16,000 in arrears related to one of his children. He believed the case was definitively closed, especially with the CSA having been wound down. However, in late 2019, the CMS unexpectedly contacted him and then swiftly removed £18,800 from his bank account.
It later emerged that critical CMS correspondence intended for George had been consistently sent to the wrong address for several years. This continued despite letters being returned undelivered and George repeatedly confirming his correct details by phone. It took until 2023 for the CMS to finally acknowledge and accept that the arrears should never have been carried over from the CSA. "They paid the money back in the end – everything taken since 2019, including the collection fees," George confirmed, "but by then the damage had already been done." The stress, the lost time, and the impact on his health and work left an indelible mark, even after the money was returned.
These individual accounts echo serious concerns raised with the government in a House of Lords report, where parents testified about money being taken "inappropriately" even when they were "trying to comply" with their obligations. The CMS’s role is to ensure a child’s living costs are paid by the non-resident parent, using a specific formula to calculate payments. If private arrangements fail, the CMS has significant powers to enforce payments, including deducting money directly from wages, bank accounts, benefits, or pensions, and recovering arrears. The DWP, while not directly addressing the specific cases of Hammond or George, issued a general statement asserting that it "tries to arrange voluntary arrears payments" and that "enforcement measures are only taken if parents continue not to pay." This statement, however, starkly contrasts with the experiences of those who had money taken while actively disputing or unaware of any outstanding debt.
Beyond enforcement issues, the House of Lords report also highlighted fundamental flaws in the CMS’s calculation model. It found the formula, in place for over two decades, to be "neither fair nor transparent," arguing that "it is outdated and does not reflect the structure of modern families." The government has committed to reviewing this calculation model and is currently considering the report’s recommendations.
The DWP’s own figures for 2025 indicate that the CMS manages 800,000 arrangements for 720,000 paying parents. The department proudly claims that its "assessment accuracy rates are consistently close to 100%." However, this claim is severely undermined by other DWP data. In 2025 alone, the CMS received 92,700 requests from parents to reconsider a decision. In a significant 21,400 of these cases – almost a quarter – the original decision was either found to be incorrect or was changed due to new information provided by the parent. This substantial rate of amended decisions suggests a far greater level of inaccuracy than the DWP publicly acknowledges. Furthermore, the DWP confirmed to the BBC that it does not publish data for the number of appeals against arrears notices, bank deductions, or other enforcement actions, raising concerns about transparency regarding the scale of these specific problems.
Charities and advocacy groups are vocally calling for urgent reform. Abigail Wood, chief executive at Gingerbread, a charity supporting single-parent families, stated that they have long campaigned for CMS reform because it is "failing parents and children alike." She welcomed the proposed changes but stressed that "the DWP needs to go further and faster to ensure a fair and functional system." Michelle Counley from the National Association for Child Support Action (NACSA) echoed this sentiment, arguing that if the CMS engaged both parents collaboratively, "many disputes could be resolved early, before figures are imposed and enforcement kicks in." She urged for "serious investment and a joined-up way of working" to prevent such devastating errors.
John Hammond and Richard George, along with many other parents who shared their stories with BBC Your Voice, are united in their demand for a complete overhaul of the CMS to prevent such devastating mistakes from recurring. "Getting the money back didn’t feel like a victory," Hammond concluded. "It was simply the end of a long fight to recover money that CMS had no right to take in the first place." George, too, reflected on his arduous battle: "It came after years of fighting, and it didn’t undo the impact it had on my health, my work or my life." Their experiences underscore a critical need for a child maintenance system that is not only efficient in collecting payments but also accurate, transparent, and accountable, safeguarding parents from unjust financial and emotional hardship. Additional reporting by Will Dahlgreen contributed to this investigation.
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