Please Contact Me if you're Frustrated with the CSA

I've held this one in for long enough.

Today's rant has but one topic - the appalling, inefficient and inaptly-titled Child Support Agency.

those who know me know that I'm divorced and that I have a little boy, who I love and don't see often enough. So, obviously, I'm obligated to support him - which I do gladly.

However, for my ex-wife to qualify for the benefits to which she is entitled, my support payment has to go through the Child Support Agency. They won't permit a private arrangement. In the early days, this wasn't a problem - the case was handled through the Plymouth CSA office, who were polite, friendly, efficient and, most of all, quick. If you had a query you could speak to your caseworker by phone, and your caseworker would come back to you with answers quickly. It was easy and all went smoothly.

Until April of this year, when they moved me to Bolton.

The people who work at CSA Bolton are the most useless, disinterested, lazy, ill-informed, dishonest and incompetent excuses for humans it's ever been my displeasure to deal with. In the 8 months - check that, 8 MONTHS - it's taken to do a simple salary reassessment, I've had the dubious honour of calling them regularly - monthly at first, then weekly from about July, and daily since November.

Every call gives different, conflicting information. I'm told a different 'caseworker' name every single time I phone, and every time I try to speak to the 'caseworker' concerned, they're either not in, at lunch, off sick, planning a Mars expedition or any one of a million other reasons why they can't come to the phone.

Quite frankly, I believe the real reason is they're swinging around in their tyres flinging their faeces at each other - it's all they're fit for.

I've been promised a call-back 16 times in the last month - and how many have I received?

None. Not one. Zilch. Zip. Nada.

Try to speak to a 'Manager'? No chance. They're somewhere in the back of the Monkey House and, in the amusing words of one callcentre cretin 'don't have to speak to the general public'.

And the crowning glory of this pustule upon the anus of efficiency - my ex-wife has received no payment from the CSA since the beginning of October, and is suffering the same indignities when she calls them trying to get an answer.

So - 8 months on, I'm still paying 30% more than I'm supposed to be paying, I'm owed over £500 in back payments, my ex-wife is owed a total of 4 months payments and neither of us can get any sense from the CSA.

Enough is enough.

The CSA was established for a good reason - to ensure that absent parents made financial provision for their offspring. However, what's come out is a Frankenstein's Monster - a bloated, inefficient Civil Service calamity that is singularly unable to perform the duties it was incepted to do.

If they can't even deal with someone who IS paying regularly - how on earth do those parents waiting for fathers who don't pay fare?

I believe that I'm not alone in my suffering when dealing with this bunch of moronic dung-flingers. So I ask you this. If you are having problems with CSA Bolton, either as a parent with care or an absent parent - or if you know someone who's reached the same levels of frustration I have, and who are facing either insanity or aneurysm - please contact me or get them to contact me. I will respond to all the contacts I get.

I have already written to Lord McKenzie of Luton with regard to my specific issue, and am sufficiently driven by anger that I want to start a campaign of emails, letters and phone calls to the DWP to force some efficiency into the system.

Please contact me and let's start getting some changes and answers.