SOME 40 per cent of parents who have their child maintenance payments controlled by the Government have failed to pay in Bournemouth and Poole.

Newly-released figures for the first three months of 2018, from the Department for Work and Pensions, show that 330 parents in Bournemouth and 270 in Poole were due to pay support through the Child Maintenance Service in Bournemouth.

But around 190 in Bournemouth and 160 in Poole did not.

Numbers provided by the government are rounded to the nearest ten, but the DWP says 42.1 per cent in Bournemouth and 39.2 per cent in Poole failed to make their payments between January and March this year.

At the start of this year, the best performance was in the Shetland Islands, Scotland, where only 24.1 per cent of parents failed to pay.

The poorest record was in Rutland, East Midlands, where 55.3 per cent of parents did not meet their legal obligation.

This payment service, called Collect & Pay, is part of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), which was set up in 2012 to replace the Child Support Agency (CSA).

The CMS can calculate the amount of child support to be paid and parents can arrange the payments between themselves – a mechanism called Direct Pay.

In Bournemouth, 730 parents made Direct Pay arrangements over the first three months of 2018. In Poole, the figure was 610 parents.

But in the cases where parents cannot do this or there is a disagreement about payment, the Collect & Pay service can collect and manage the payments between the parents.

The CMS can take money from a parent's earnings or their bank account if they try to avoid payments, or take a parent to court.

In Bournemouth, over the specified period, the CMS intervened in the payment arrangements of 1,030 parents in Bournemouth and 850 in Poole.

Charity for single-parent families Gingerbread said the latest figures for parents with outstanding child support debts were "worryingly high".

Its research officer Sumi Rabindrakumar said: "Child maintenance alone lifts a fifth of low-income single parent families out of poverty.

"But sadly, we regularly hear from single parents whose children are not receiving the support they are owed even when using the Collect & Pay service.

"With £200 million child maintenance debt already built up under this specific service, excluding any debts for the many who don't use Collect & Pay, there's a real danger of the government repeating the failings of the previous Child Support Agency unless they act now. The Child Maintenance Service must put in place stronger systems and resource to make sure that children do not go without the financial support they need."