Child Support Enforcement Bill - screening

This Bill will allow the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) to introduce new administrative liability orders, to replace the outdated court-based liability order process, to substantially speed up the time it takes for the CMS to initiate its strongest enforcement powers against parents who are failing to make their child maintenance payments. The Bill is technical in nature and the only impact on Section 75 categories will be that liability orders are made more quickly against non-compliant paying parents, and therefore maintenance should be paid to receiving parents more quickly. The Bill will not have any other practical impact on any Section 75 Categories; it will simply shorten and simplify the process the CMS must undertake to make a liability order thus ensuring receiving parents get child maintenance payments faster. The current court-based liability order process takes approximately 22 weeks, and it is anticipated that the new administrative liability order process will be substantially shortened to 6 weeks.