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The Child Support Agency (CSA) has, for many years, issued Deduction from Earnings Orders (DEOs) as one of the methods used to enforce the payment of child maintenance. The CSA has recently provided the author with information about the CSA's use of approved debt collection agencies to locate non-resident parents and collect arrears of child maintenance by, among other means, issuing DEOs direct to employers.
Statutory authority to permit the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to contract-out the enforcement of child maintenance is provided by means of the Contracting Out (Functions Relating to Child Support) Order 2006, which came into force on 3 July 2006.
Two agencies are currently being used in this way, Eversheds LLP and Legal & Trade Collections Ltd, and they have already issued DEOs to some employers. Such DEOs are only for new scheme cases, identifiable by their use of the term "protected earnings proportion" rather than "protected earnings rate".
In advance of receiving a DEO, employers may be contacted by the debt collection agency to establish an employee's pay date, payroll cut off date, payment frequency, payroll address or number and job title/position.
When an employer receives a DEO that has been issued by a debt collection agency on behalf of the CSA, it must be processed and applied in exactly the same way as a DEO issued directly by the CSA. The orders themselves are very similar in appearance, except that they bear the letterhead and logos of the particular debt collection agency.
Employers will not receive a DEO from the CSA and also from a debt collection agency for the same employee.
As instructed in the order, the monies deducted from the employee's earnings are sent, by the usual deadlines, direct to the debt collection agency, not to the CSA.
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Further information:
The Contracting Out (Functions Relating to Child Support) Order 2006
Advice for Employers
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For Payroll and Human Resource Professionals
