Child support IT fiasco costs £11.5m in staff overtime

The Child Support Agency (CSA) has been forced to pay staff more than £11.5m for hundreds of thousands of hours of overtime since the introduction of a £450m computer system by EDS.

MPs last year branded the new IT system an "appalling waste of public money", amid concerns over a mounting backlog of child support claims, and called for it to be scrapped completely. Former CSA head Doug Smith also stepped down amid the furore.

Stephen Geraghty, the new head of the CSA, admitted in a letter to MPs last week that £11.54m has been paid to cover an estimated 785,000 hours of overtime worked by the agency's staff since the introduction of CS2 in 2003.

The CSA said it is currently compiling a report on the total costs of the delay as a result of the introduction of the CS2 computer system ahead of commercial negotiations with EDS. Following that, a paper will be submitted to the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

The rollout of the CS2 system was delayed by two years, and since its introduction in March 2003 the CSA has had to write off £1bn in claims, while some £750m in child support payments from absent parents remains uncollected.