New figures reveal 40% of Bradford parents avoid paying child maintenance fees

Tuesday, 29 October 2019 11:02

New statistics have revealed over 40% of parents in Bradford who are required to pay their child maintenance through government schemes are still neglecting to pay their ex-partners.

New figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that 700 parents did not pay support due through the Child Maintenance Service’s Collect and Pay scheme in Bradford between April and June this year.

The Child Maintenance Service is supposed to take money directly from these parents' earnings or their bank account if they try to avoid payments, with powers to eventually take those who dodge payments to court, however two in five parents have still not made any payment in Bradford.

Joe Richardson, research and policy officer at Gingerbread – a charity that supports single parent families - said: "We regularly hear from single parents who have battled long and hard, often without success, to secure child maintenance payments to cover the essential day-to-day costs of raising their child. These payments lift many single-parent families out of poverty.

"To achieve real impact the Department of Work and Pensions must use its existing powers to enforce payments more rigorously, as well as providing supportive programmes for separating parents to encourage child maintenance payment."

The charity went on to state that it’s “simply not acceptable” that over 100,000 children nationwide aren’t receiving payments

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