The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has announced that parents who refuse to pay child maintenance could face curfews, as Ministers plan new powers for the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). The change is being considered as part of fresh proposals that will get more of the money that is owed to the children of separated parents.
The CMS collected or arranged £1 billion in child maintenance payments last year, operating as a crucial weapon in the battle against child poverty. Child support payments help lift around 140,000 children out of poverty each year.
Curfew orders would be another method of enforcement, alongside current powers which include passport and driving licence confiscation and earnings deduction orders, to tackle parents who continually refuse to pay maintenance owed. As an alternative sanction to prison, which is costly and prevents maintenance getting to children, DWP said curfews would act as a deterrent by restricting and disrupting non-compliant parents’ lifestyles, stopping them, for example, from going out for dinner, to the pub or going on holiday.
