Errant parents cough up £500,000

THOUSANDS more Oldham children are getting the rewards they deserve after the Child Support Agency collected more than £500,000 extra money from parents in the last year.

The amount of cash collected from Oldham parents has risen year on year from £2.7 million in 2004/05 to £3.3 million at the end of June this year — a rise of 19.5 per cent.

It means 2,970 Oldham children are benefiting from the maintenance collected or arranged between July, 2007, and the end of last month.

Oldham East and Saddleworth MP Phil Woolas said: “I have been one of the CSA’s greatest critics so it is good to see progress. The new system is bedding in but there is a huge way to go.”

Figures released yesterday show that nationally, almost 750,000 children are benefiting from child maintenance payments as the Child Support Agency collected or arranged for more than £1billion to be handed over in the last 12 months.

This compares with £6.5 billion of maintenance collected or arranged in the previous 14 years of the agency’s operation.

Child maintenance minister James Purnell said: “Payments of child maintenance currently lift 100,000 children out of poverty and we estimate that the successful implementation of the operational improvement plan by April, 2009, will lift an additional 40,000 children out of poverty.

“This should bring assurance to existing CSA clients that they will continue to see further improvements as the child maintenance and enforcement commission is established later this year, and importantly, see that more money is getting to more children.”

The 1.4 million existing cases will not be fully transferred to the new system until 2013.

CSA chief executive Stephen Geraghty said the CSA had delivered real improvements.

But he warned: “The CSA will continue to pursue parents who evade their financial responsibilities. Our message to them is clear. Act now or we will.”