The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.
Letter from Hilary Reynolds:
In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive. As he is currently unavailable, I am responding on his behalf.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Child Support Agency cases have been migrated from the old rules system onto the new rules system and then back onto the old rules system.
The original system (CSCS) runs cases on the old scheme rules only. The new system (CS2) run cases on the new scheme rules; and also old scheme cases linked to a new scheme pulled through to the new system, although still operating on old scheme rules.
Currently, the only way for cases to be transferred from the old system to the new system is through reactive migration, which happens where an old scheme case has a link to a new scheme application and is therefore transferred from one system to the other. There were 322,000 old scheme cases operating on the new computer system in March 2006.
An old scheme case that has been transferred from the old system to the new system is only converted to the new scheme where there is a relevant link with a new scheme application. Relevant links are ones where the new application will have a financial impact on the linked case. At the end of March 2006, around 41,000 previously old scheme cases had been converted into the new scheme, and were thus also operating on the new computer system.
There is currently no policy for converting cases from the new rules and system back to the old scheme.
I hope you find this helpful.
[holding answer 22 June 2006]: The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive. He will write to the right, hon. Member with the information requested.
Letter from Hilary Reynolds dated 3 July 2006:
In reply to your parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive. As he is currently on leave, I am responding on his behalf.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many children have non-resident parents with a Child Support Agency liability.
At the end of March 2006 there were 1,507,000 children that had a non-resident parent with a Child Support Agency liability. This includes nil liabilities.
I hope you find this useful
The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.
Letter from Hilary Reynolds:
In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive. As he is currently unavailable, I am responding on his behalf.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when the software to handle the migration of old system cases onto the new system was delivered to the Child Support Agency.
There are two parts to the process of moving from the old computer system (CSCS) to the new system (CS2); firstly migration of the cases across the computer systems and secondly the conversion of those cases from the old scheme to the new scheme.
The software to enable bulk migration of cases from the old computer system to the new computer system was delivered in May 2005. The Initial Conversion software to enable the conversion of cases from the old scheme to the new scheme was delivered in March 2006. These are both necessary to support migration and conversion. However, before bulk migration and conversion could take place defects in the new computer system would need to be resolved. A number of software releases have been scheduled for between now and the end of 2007, designed to remove the large majority of existing defects. A large data cleansing exercise would need to be completed to support successful conversion.
I hope you find this useful.