Mr N’s complaint about the Child Support Agency
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Some delays in receiving child support maintenance payments may be unavoidable. However, in Mr N’s case, the Child Support Agency unnecessarily delayed consideration of an advance payment, which was itself the product of their earlier maladministration.
Background to the complaint
Advance payment
Following Mr N’s previous complaint to the Ombudsman (which we upheld and reported on in March 2006), the Child Support Agency (the Agency) agreed to consider making him an advance payment of maintenance for the period April to December 2004. Our report also referred to a telephone call between Mr N and the Agency on 19 May 2005, which the Agency’s notes said had been terminated because of what they felt was his abusive manner. In June 2006 the Agency told Mr N that they were considering the advance payment; he should hear from them in the next six to eight weeks. In April 2007 the Agency awarded Mr N an advance payment of £940, with interest.
Ongoing maintenance payments and telephone contact
In May 2006 Mr N wrote to the Agency to complain that the maintenance payments he was receiving from the parent with care, via the Agency, had become erratic. The Agency replied on 19 July saying that they had tried to telephone him to explain, but had been unsuccessful. They said that they had, by mistake, sent Mr N’s payments to him by girocheque rather than direct payment, which would explain the erratic payments. They said they would consider paying him compensation. Mr N wrote back to complain about the delay in responding to his letter, and that the Agency had previously agreed not to contact him by telephone. (In a subsequent letter to his MP, Mr N said that the Agency had not in fact tried to telephone him, as they had claimed, because he had a log of all incoming calls. The Agency have no record of an attempted telephone call.) The Agency refused further compensation: they considered that compensation payments they had previously made to Mr N between May 2001 and September 2005 (totalling £740) adequately remedied their errors and delays. In July and August 2007 the Agency failed to make payments to Mr N that they had received from the non-resident parent. They held the payments on their clerical log because the previous schedule of payments had run its course, and a new one had not yet been calculated. The Agency calculated a new schedule in September which enabled them to pass on the payments to Mr N.
Response to Mr N’s complaint that the Agency’s records showed he had been abusive
Following the Ombudsman’s March 2006 report, Mr N complained to the Agency that their records showed that they considered him to have been abusive during a telephone conversation on 19 May 2005. The Agency sent Mr N the contemporaneous manuscript note of the call in which the officer had noted that Mr N had ‘sarcastically bleated goodbye’ a number of times, and had shouted and been abusive. The Agency apologised to Mr N and invited him to identify which remarks he wanted deleted from the record, which he did.
In August 2006 the Agency told Mr N that the officer’s senior manager had been informed, and the matter would be dealt with internally; the record of the telephone conversation had been destroyed and replaced with a non-subjective record; and they would consider paying compensation. Mr N asked the Agency for more information about what disciplinary action would be taken. The Agency declined to disclose that information, citing the Data Protection Act, and refused to make Mr N a compensation payment for gross embarrassment because the comments had not been released outside the Agency.
Request for arrears
In August 2007 the Agency noted that three payments from Mr N’s account (as the non-resident parent) had not been allocated, and in September the Agency told him that he owed arrears of £1,058.76. Mr N telephoned the Agency, and they acknowledged that he had paid the maintenance and did not owe the arrears.
What we investigated
In February 2007 we received Mr N’s complaint. The concerns we investigated were that the Agency:
- took too long to decide whether to award him an advance payment of maintenance, and failed to update him on progress;
- delayed forwarding maintenance payments to him from the non-resident parent;
- tried to contact him by telephone, having agreed not to do so; and
- failed to respond properly to his complaint that officers had wrongly alleged that he had been abusive to them.
Mr N later asked us to investigate two further issues, that he:
- had not received maintenance for July and August 2007; and
- had been told he had not paid maintenance between June and September 2007.
The Ombudsman has no remit to investigate actions relating to appointments or removals, pay, discipline, superannuation or other personnel matters. Therefore we could not investigate Mr N’s complaint about the Agency’s refusal to tell him what action they took in response to his concerns about unfounded allegations of abusive behaviour.
Mr N complained that the Agency’s actions had exasperated, frustrated and offended him, and caused him to suffer financially.
What our investigation found
Advance payment
The Agency told Mr N in June 2006 that he should hear from them within six to eight weeks about an advance payment, but they did not make the decision until April 2007. The delay occurred because of maladministration by the Agency, and we found no evidence that they had kept Mr N informed of their progress. That maladministration meant Mr N had to wait a further ten months before they put things right, causing frustration and inconvenience. We upheld the complaint.
Ongoing maintenance payments and request for arrears
Maintenance payments to Mr N were twice disrupted because of errors by the Agency: they mistakenly paid him by girocheque, and failed to set up a new payment schedule in time. The reason for refusing compensation for the first disruption was unjustified: although Mr N had already received compensation payments totalling £740, he had raised a new issue, and it was unreasonable for the Agency to take the view that payments for past errors absolved them in respect of future mistakes. It was careless and insensitive of the Agency to ask Mr N to pay arrears he had already paid. As an isolated incident, it was not significant enough to be called maladministration; however, when considered together with the other instances of mishandling, they amount to maladministration. We upheld the complaint.
Telephone contact
Although the Agency had agreed not to telephone Mr N, they told him they had tried to do so, albeit unsuccessfully. Mr N disputes whether the Agency did actually telephone him. Whether it was an unsuccessful attempt which went against a previous undertaking, or a carelessly drafted letter, the Agency’s error did not cause Mr N an injustice. We did not uphold the complaint.
Response to Mr N’s concerns that their records showed he had been abusive
The Agency acknowledged that the term ‘sarcastically bleated goodbye’ should not have been included in the note of the telephone call. Their apology and prompt remedial action was an appropriate response to Mr N’s complaint, and their decision not to disclose further information about disciplinary action did not appear unreasonable. We did not uphold the complaint.
Overall, we partly upheld Mr N’s complaint and concluded our investigation in April 2008.
Outcome
In response to our recommendations, the Agency:
- sent Mr N a written apology from a senior officer;
- paid him compensation of £100; and
- gave him the name of a senior officer who would take responsibility for overseeing his cases.
