Constant computer problems at the Child Maintenance Service are leading to parents being overcharged, placing them in desperate straits, a whistleblower said.
The caseworker said staff are ‘slamming their heads on keyboards’ at the ‘crazy’ IT glitches, and estimated up to one in five calculations are wrong.
It comes just months after a Daily Mail exposé found that at least two fathers have killed themselves and many are being ‘financially crippled’ by inflated demands from the government agency.
The whistleblower said: ‘We get quite a lot of complaints that calculations are incorrect and parents saying they have suicidal tendencies.’
Concerns are so severe that learning how to deal with suicidal callers is a ‘major part’ of training, including regular refresher courses, she added.
But she said that even when staff know the calculations are wrong and that the parents cannot afford it, they are under strict orders to tell them to pay up.
‘As case workers, we tell the paying parent even if the payment schedule is wrong, they should keep paying it.
‘It happens a lot and is sad, especially when they can’t afford it. All we can do is say to pay it... That’s the policy we are given and have to stick to it.’
Constant computer problems at the Child Maintenance Service are leading to parents being overcharged, placing them in desperate straits, a whistleblower said
The whistleblower’s account tallies with evidence previously obtained by the Mail, including recordings of CMS staff admitting the computer system has gone ‘belly up’.
This newspaper also uncovered agency letters blaming incorrect payment demands on system problems, documents showing directors discussing IT issues, and parents receiving multiple payment demands for vastly different amounts in the same week or day.
The failings have been compared to the Post Office Horizon scandal.
The whistleblower, who has been a CMS caseworker for over a year, said there were ‘many errors on the system’.
‘I have never seen such a poorly built system in my life,’ she said.
The CMS calculates how much a parent should pay to an ex-partner after a separation, based on their income and how many children they have.
When claims are first made, payment amounts are manually worked out by a caseworker and are usually correct because they go through several ‘checkers’, the source said.
But problems can occur during subsequent automated calculations to update payments or generate an annual review.
‘Sometimes the system can f*** it up,’ she said.
‘Then it is the caseworker’s duty to fix it and sometimes these mistakes can be big.
‘In one case, the system generated £600 in arrears [for a parent] when they only had £100 to pay.
‘Everyone knows about these issues because we all have to deal with it on a daily basis. It is a lot.
‘We are all so stressed out and I am sometimes slamming my head on the keyboard.’
Another problem is that around every two months, IT upgrades, called Sprint, are implemented which ‘mess up’ everything.
It can lead to miscalculations, the wrong letters going out, parents being unable to access their account and staff being unable to see updates, the whistleblower said, claiming: ‘When Sprint happens, the whole system goes crazy.’
Concerns about Sprint were one of several IT issues raised in minutes of meetings of CMS directors in 2018, obtained by the Mail through Freedom of Information requests.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which runs the CMS, said these were all rectified that year and never affected calculations of amounts owed.
As CMS stopped recording minutes of such meetings after 2018, that claim cannot be verified.
The CMS IT system is also meant to check a paying parent’s income against the figures that the taxman holds.
But the caseworker, who cannot be named because staff are barred from speaking publicly, described ‘many cases’ when the income figure the CMS had was different from HMRC’s, which she believed ‘must be an error’.
Two parents who say they were overcharged maintenance also provided the Mail with recordings from CMS workers describing how the system had extracted the wrong data from HMRC.
This newspaper was told by relatives of two fathers who took their own lives that they did so after struggling to pay ‘fictitious’ bills foisted on them by the CMS.
Martin Cavanagh, from the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents CMS staff, said ‘poor, inflexible IT systems’ had compounded an already very complicated job.
‘If the basic IT system is not fit for purpose, then you will always be on that back foot.’
The DWP said the CMS periodically undertakes system maintenance and upgrades.
Its system is based on a parent’s income from HMRC data for the last full tax year, but parents can provide further information to change the calculation, it said.
The calculations were found to be 99 per cent accurate, based on the information it received, in figures analysed by the National Audit Office, it added. A DWP spokesman said: ‘More than 4,000 people work across the CMS in eight different locations, managing 810,000 child maintenance arrangements.
‘Where we fall short, we take that seriously and we continue to modernise the service and improve how we work so that cases can be progressed more quickly and effectively.
‘We have no evidence of systemic IT faults which affect calculations... Any parent who disagrees with a decision has the right to challenge it.
‘Safeguarding is something we take very seriously, and our staff are trained to identify mental health risks and take action.’
For support, call Samaritans on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org
Richard Woods, 45, was billed £43,000 – more than double the real amount he owed – plunging him into huge debt
'Both my children suffered while I was chased for £20,000 I didn't owe'
By Taro Kaneko
A father-of-two was overcharged by more than £20,000 after the Child Maintenance Service overcalculated his income by £63,000 across five years.
Richard Woods, 45, was billed £43,000 – more than double the real amount he owed – plunging him into huge debt.
On one occasion after he was briefly unemployed because of the stress the demands were causing, the CMS took £3,500 directly from a joint account he shared with his new partner.
The IT worker from Swindon said: ‘It was unbelievable that it happened and all I felt was guilt.
‘The money in the account wasn’t even mine, it was my partner’s. I felt guilty because that money was to put a roof over my head.
‘I was unemployed and trying to support my family the best I could. They only took the money from the joint account because I had gone £10,000 into my overdraft from the inflated payments.’
Mr Woods spent years calling and complaining to the agency after the problems began in 2021.
Finally – in a recorded call in May 2025 later heard by the Mail – he was told that the inflated income was ‘information the system has pulled in’ and that, when a ‘manual’ check’ was done, it ‘shouldn’t have been applied’.
It is believed this was caused by problems with its system obtaining out-of-date information when it linked to figures from the HMRC. The CMS finally corrected his income, but while Mr Woods said this was a relief he remains angry at the ‘wasted years’ of his life.
He has also lost thousands of pounds that he can’t get back.
‘My children could feel the stress in my house and the CMS had affected their upbringing over the past five years, over a problem they have caused,’ he said.
‘If the CMS is that keen on supporting children, it needs to remember kids have two homes. By making me overpay in the tens of thousands of pounds, they have reduced the quality of life I have been able to give my children.’
Under the draconian system, if a parent fails to pay what they claim is an inflated demand, the CMS has the power to seize cash from their bank account automatically or deduct salary directly from pay packets even while they are appealing against the decision.
It can also freeze bank accounts, leaving some parents unable to withdraw savings if emergency expenses arise.