Warrant issued for arrest of Corby man who refuses to pay child support

A Corby man who has persistently failed to financially support his child has had an arrest warrant issued after he failed to turn up at court.

Gareth Philip Hammett was given a suspended jail term a year ago after a court heard that he owed £9,609 in maintenance payments to the mother of his child.

In October last year he again appeared before magistrates after failing to keep up with the terms of his repayments. They ordered that he pay her £200 per fortnight and a further £100 per month to clear up the arrears or else he would be jailed for 42 days.

However, earlier this week Hammett was again due back at Northampton Magistrates’ Court after allegedly neglecting to make the payments.

The 44-year-old of West Glebe Road, failed to appear at the case brought by the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). So magistrates issued a warrant for his immediate arrest.

Child maintenance is financial support towards a child’s everyday living costs that a parent without the main day-to-day care of the child provides to the other parent.

Parents who cannot reach an agreement between themselves over maintenance can ask the CMS to decide on the amount that needs to be paid. 93 per cent of those parents subject to CMS orders are men.

During 2022, there was a sharp increase of 52 per cent in new applications to the CMS from 79,000 in the year to December 2021 to 119,700 in the year to December 2022.

During that same year, 35 per cent of parents (58,400) subject to CMS arrangements didn’t pay a single penny towards the upkeep of their children.

The CMS can take the payment directly from the paying parent’s earnings, bank account or benefits if necessary. If means that the parents do not need to have contact with each other if they do not want to.

The Child Support Act 1991 allows the DWP to take non-payers to court and apply to magistrates to remove their driving licence, passport or, in the most serious of cases, to jail them.