Special Payments Decisions for CSA

[Zed2820]

Over two and a half years ago I contacted the CSA to request that my sons father be assessed and asked to pay Child support. To cut this long and frustrating story very short, the CSA made an administrative error, which they have admitted to, which meant that I lost out on payments from Jan 2011 until Dec 2012. In Dec the admitted to this and also paid me £50 compensation for the delay in dealing with my complaint. After my ex had paid six months of CS payments I asked to be referred to the Special Payments Department (on the advice of the Complaints Resolution deparment) to resolve the financial loss I suffered through their mistakes.

 

After much "faffing about" and delay tactics this case has now been refferred to the mysterious Special payment Dept, (they arent allowed to speak to me or the CSA main office....just emails apparantly), and have been waiting for 30 days so far. i have no written acknowledgment of this refferal, although it has been confirmed several times on the telephone, and I appear to be sat in limbo waiting for them to make a decision.

 

Does anyone have any experience of how long this particular stage of the process should take? i have read their guidelines to the payment officers, but cannot find any reference to time limits. i have already spent hundreds (literally) of punds on phone calls during this battle, and cannot seem to find any other agency or body to help. i do not wish to involve an MP as, reading others accounts, this only seems to complicate matters, and I believe that ICE only get involved once a decision has been made.

 

So sick and tired of being penalised for the mistakes of an incompetent and poorly administrated Govt body. I am clearly one of very very many who are suffering because of this. Any advice is appreciated.

[Zed2820]

Ok....so im going to reply to my own thread because today I have contacted the Independent Case Examiner and they were most helpful. This might help someone else going through this too, so this is what they told me.~

 

Apparantly I should expect a period of eight weeks for the Special Payments Department to make a decision (the Complaints team either do not know this or are not revealing it to clients).

What ICE advised me to do was to send a complaint again, via email, stating that I formally requst a written acknowledgment of the referral to Special payments, and the date it was sent. (They have conflicting records of this date at the moment but it should be 26/07/13)

 

They advised that i should not mention the eight week time frame as things are often resolved earlier if that number is not mentioned(!!!).

 

They advised I formally request a time frame by which i can expect a decision on my case to be made and confirmation of that in writing.

 

i have done this today and printed the email acknowledgment for my records. ICE also advised that if in another month (8weeks from the referral in fact) i have heard nothing then i should submit a request for referral to the REVIEW team. When they have examined the case, if i am still not happy, i will then be able to contact ICE to have the whole rediculous debarcle examined.

 

Well, this process has taken nearly three years, i guess another few months wont kill me! ICE were VERY nice and very helpful. i get the feeling they hear things like this ALOT!

[Zed2820]

UPDATE: Well, wether it was the fact that they knew I had been in touch with ICE or they just got sick of me mythering, two days ago I had my decision in a letter. They are awarding me 46 weeks of child support which they will pay me within the net four weeks. In actual fact there should be another 24 weeks on top of this amount, but actually i am so tired of fighting this battle that i will make two more phpne calls to see if i can correct their calculation, but if in the end there are adamant i feel that i have fought enough and will accept the award. The cost of phone calls made over the three years is more than £300 alone, so i have to weigh one thing up against another.

 

ICE would get involved at this point if i wished them to. But i hope this shows all those of you out there who are currently having issues with the CSA, that if you feel you are right, just keep on fighting, be persistant, back up your argument with evidence if you can and do not give up hope.....no matter how frustrating it seems. Nearly every single person at the CSA Head Office was pleasant and helpful, and although the system failed me, and it took them forever to see this, i am glad i persued it. Alls well that ends well. perhaps if the CSA were more competant in their administrative processes it would save government coffers an awful lot of money, as i know there are many many more people like me, who have ended up being compensated for administrative errors. just get it right in the first place CSA and save us all the bother!

[lqbx]

Hi, I am currently going through this whole process and as it stands I have missed out on 175 weeks worth of CSA thanks to a mistake they made back in sept 2010. Its taken them until now to send me my first payment table but not yet recieved a penny. I already contacted the ICE just to get my claim started. Now iv been told the ex must pay fot 6 months before they decide what to do next and it will go to the special payments team. Today I recieved a letter to say that the ex has been asked to pay too much in arrears (5 weeks worth) which is another kick in the teeth as he's yet to pay anything towards his children (we split june 2010!) Anyway im worried that they are going to brush the whole thing off and they are not giving me any information as to what is happening. Im interested to know how far you took your case and did you get the full arrears back in the end?