Subject Access Request to the Child Maintenance Service

The Child Maintenance Service is delivered by the Department for Work and Pensions, and the DWP is the data controller for child maintenance records. There is no separate Child Maintenance Service subject access route. The DWP's own request guidance lists "your Child Maintenance Service account information" among the things you can ask it for, and the online service and postal address on this page are the ones that handle it. The DWP page covers the same route for benefit records. A Child Maintenance Service leaflet called "How we collect and use your information" still opens on GOV.UK's asset server even though its publication page has gone. It tells you a subject access request costs a £10 fee. That charge came from the old Data Protection Act 1998 and no longer applies: the DWP's personal information charter says "you have the right to access the data that we hold about you. DWP does not charge for this." Do not follow that leaflet. The Child Maintenance Service publishes a postal address of its own — Child Maintenance Service 21, Mail Handling Site A, Wolverhampton WV98 2BU — and it is for case correspondence, not for a request for your records. Requests go to Right of Access Requests at WV98 2EF. The two are in the same building and the same town and differ in the last three characters of the postcode. A child maintenance case is about two parents, so asking for your case records is asking for a file that also holds the other parent's information. The Child Maintenance Service publishes what it shares between parents: it will "share your name and your child's name with the other parent (your address is not shared)", and it says you can use the service "if you do not want your child's other parent to know your location or personal information". What it does not currently publish is how it treats the other parent's information inside a response to your own request. Neither the DWP's request guidance nor its personal information charter uses the words "redact" or "third party" anywhere. Some of what people ask for arrives without a request. The Child Maintenance Service says its online account is for reporting a change of circumstances, reporting a missed or extra payment, reporting income or expenses it should consider, reporting fraud, and viewing your payment plan; and after every annual review it sends "a letter telling you how they have worked out your child maintenance amount", whether or not the amount changed. Check both before you ask. Disagreeing with the amount is a separate process from asking for the records. You ask for a mandatory reconsideration within 30 days of the date on your decision letter, and if that does not settle it you appeal to the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal within one month, on form SSCS2. The DWP says it will send requested information within one calendar month, so a request will not necessarily reach you before those deadlines pass. The DWP's Customer Records Retention Schedule puts Child Maintenance Group records on a standard 24-month retention once there is no live interest in the case — a live interest meaning fraud, debt recovery, an appeal or mandatory reconsideration, or a complaint with the Independent Case Examiner or the Ombudsman. A request made long after a case closed may find nothing left to send. If a solicitor or adviser is asking for you, the DWP publishes a third-party request form and says it "will need to get the consent of the other person (the 'subject') before we can begin your request". The form's tick-list of record types runs from Attendance Allowance to Universal Credit and has no child maintenance entry at all, so a child maintenance request has to go in its free-text box. The completed form goes to Right of Access Gateway Team, Post Handling Site A, Wolverhampton WV98 2EF — "Post" rather than "Mail", which is how the DWP prints it. Northern Ireland has its own Child Maintenance Service. GOV.UK gives a separate case address for it — Child Maintenance Service 24, Mail Handling Site A, Wolverhampton WV98 2BU — and routes Northern Ireland enquiries to nidirect, which in turn links to communities-ni.gov.uk. data.protectionofficer@dwp.gov.uk and the DWP Data Protection Team at Benton Park View 6, Room BP6001, Mail Handling Site A, Wolverhampton WV98 1ZX are for data protection questions and complaints. The DWP says that if you want a copy of your information you should use its request guidance "rather than writing to the Data Protection Officer". The child maintenance helpline on 0800 171 2345 cannot take a request either — the Child Maintenance Service does not publish any telephone route for one. The registration number on this page is the DWP's; the Child Maintenance Service has none of its own.

Made under UK GDPR Article 15, subject to the exemptions in Schedule 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018

Central government departments hold large, long-lived files, and requests to them are usually tied to a decision the person is challenging: an immigration application, a benefit decision, a tax assessment. Naming the decision, the date and any reference number substantially improves what comes back.

Departments also have exemptions available to them that most organisations do not. Part 1 of Schedule 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018 lets them restrict access where complying would be likely to prejudice the prevention or detection of crime, the apprehension or prosecution of offenders, or the assessment or collection of a tax or duty. HMRC relies on the last of these. Separately, an immigration exemption lets the Home Office restrict access where complying would be likely to prejudice effective immigration control. Both are limited to the extent of the prejudice — neither is a blanket refusal, and a department has to justify withholding rather than assert it.

The immigration exemption in particular has been narrowed by litigation. The Court of Appeal found it incompatible with the UK GDPR twice, in 2021 and again in December 2023, and it was amended after each judgment. Since the amendments in force on 8 March 2024 the Home Office must decide case by case, separately for each right, and afresh each time, must show a substantial risk that outweighs the risk to your interests, must record its reasons, and must tell you it has applied the exemption unless saying so would itself be prejudicial.

Departments run their own subject access routes rather than one central one, and several also publish a faster self-service channel that answers the same question for free. Using the wrong one is the most common cause of delay: a request sent to a general enquiry address gets rerouted, and a request for information already sitting in an online account gets refused as unnecessary.

• Immigration and visa application files
• Benefit claim records and decision notes
• Tax records and correspondence
• Records of a decision you are appealing
• Internal notes and assessments about you

Deadline. An organisation must respond without undue delay and within one month. It may extend by up to two further months where the request is complex or you have made a number of requests, but it must tell you within the first month that it is doing so, and why.

Cost. There is normally no fee. A reasonable fee may only be charged where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, or where you ask for further copies.

Proving who you are. An organisation may ask you to verify your identity, but only where it has reasonable doubts about who you are, and it should ask for the minimum needed. Where it needs further information to deal with your request, the one-month clock pauses until you provide it.

How hard they have to look. An organisation has to carry out a reasonable and proportionate search — not an exhaustive one. What counts as reasonable depends on the volume of information, the difficulty of locating it, and the size and resources of the organisation. This is a common reason for a partial response, and it is worth being specific about what you want.

If they ignore you. Complain to the organisation first. Since 19 June 2026 every organisation has had a legal duty to give you a clear way to raise a data protection complaint, to acknowledge it within 30 days, to look into it properly and to tell you the outcome. If it does not, or the answer is incomplete, you can then complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.