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System overload

Disaster has dogged the Child Support Agency since its inception, but is there a solution? Jackie Cosh reports The Child Support Agency (CSA) has been back in the spotlight, with reports that the figure of uncollected maintenance by the CSA is now exceeding 1.26bn. More than one million telephone calls to the agency during 2004/05 were abandoned as callers simply gave up. The total backlog of parents waiting for a maintenance assessment continues to rise, up by 20 per cent in the past six months alone.

The Child Support Agency (CSA) has been back in the spotlight, with reports that the figure of uncollected maintenance by the CSA is now exceeding Pounds 1.26bn. More than one million telephone calls to the agency during 2004/05 were abandoned as callers simply gave up. The total backlog of parents waiting for a maintenance assessment continues to rise, up by 20 per cent in the past six months alone.

The CSA was an idea that former prime minister Margaret Thatcher came up with in 1989 when she learned that 80 per cent of lone mothers on Income Support were receiving no money from the fathers of their children.

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