UK Debt collectors to Go After $5.2 billion in Child Support

Published on:
12 September 2006 at 10:20 a.m. ET

Written by: Unknown Author –

http://www.insidearm.com/news/00019344-uk-debt-collectors-to-go-after-52-billion/

By Patrick Wintour, The Guardian

The Child Support Agency is to be stripped of the task of collecting unpaid maintenance from absent parents with the job handed to private debt collectors. The debt collectors will not be entitled to keep a proportion of the debt they manage to collect to finance their work, removing fears that a parent’s awarded maintenance would be correspondingly reduced.

Difficult political issues surrounding privacy and methods of collection enforcement have yet to be ironed out, but bailiffs are already used to collect council tax debt. As much as Â£3bn ($5.2 billion) in unpaid maintenance payments is due, although in practice much of the money is probably lost for ever.

For this complete story, please visit Debt collectors to recover unpaid child maintenance.