Catalogue description Records created or inherited by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission

Child Support Agency

The Child Support Act 1991 arose from statutory regulations in the first schedule to the Children Act 1989, which was itself primarily a modified re-enactment of the provisions of the Guardianship of Minors Acts 1971 and 1973, the Children Act 1975, and sections 15 and 16 of the Family Law Reform Act 1987. Following the 1991 Act, Branch B4 of Social Security Division B of the Department of Social Security was set up to oversee and coordinate the creation of the Child Support Agency.

The Child Support Agency subsequently came into being in April 1993, as an executive agency of the Department of Social Security and then for the Department for Work and Pensions in 2001. Under the 1991 Act, Child Support Agency was responsible for assessing, collecting and, where necessary, enforcing the payment of child maintenance by absent parents.

Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission

In February 2006, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions announced the Government's twin-track approach to the reform of child maintenance in Great Britain: a three-year Operational Improvement Plan (completed in 2008) to stabilise the performance of the Child Support Agency (CSA) alongside a longer-term redesign of the child maintenance system.

On 24 July 2008 the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission was established as a legal entity under the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008. The Commission is a Crown non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions. In November 2008 it took over responsibility for the Child Support Agency's functions from the Department for Work and Pensions and operates the existing statutory maintenance scheme through a division operating under the CSA brand.