The administration of the Child Support Agency is the matter for the chief executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.
Letter from Stephen Geraghty, dated 6 March 2008:
In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the staffing cost of each staff grade of the Child Support Agency was in each of the last 10 years. [185123]
The Child Support Agency is a part of the Department for Work and Pensions. The Agency uses the Department’s payroll and accounting system to record and report expenditure.
Whilst the payroll system does have the functionality to report employee costs by grade, in order to fully respond to this and capture all elements of employee costs, a number of scans would need to be commissioned. This would be at disproportionate cost in terms of both IT development and employee time.
However, the table below provides the total Agency spend on employees for the last ten financial years as recorded in the Child Support Agency Annual Report and Accounts.
Financial year Total employee spend (£ million) 1997-98 145.5 1998-99 141.2 1999-2000 154.0 2000-01 157.7 2001-02 181.5 2002-03 210.0 2003-04 215.6 2004-05 218.9 2005-06 240.1 2006-07 271.2
I hope you find this answer helpful.