Child Support Agency To Be Scrapped

If there were a prize for the most inefficient, incompetent and ineffective government body ever devised, there is virtually no doubt that the winner, by a long margin, would be the Child Support Agency.

By common consent, the CSA, set up in 1993 to assess and enforce child maintenance payments by separated parents, usually fathers, has failed to deliver a fraction of what it intended to do.

In the process, it has forced many hundreds of thousands of mothers with young children to rely on inadequate state benefits or on a single income – while the kids’ fathers got off scot-free.

Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has finally called time on the CSA. He announced that he is asking David Henshaw, former chief executive of Liverpool City Council, to head a review into the CSA and the way it works.

The report will be published in July. However, Mr Hutton is already indicating that the CSA, in its current form, will cease to exist.
In the meantime, the CSA will – supposedly – be implementing new rules to squeeze more money out of the 88% of dads who should be paying proper maintenance – but don’t.

By Nic Cicutti, MSN Money Special Correspondent