Day: December 14, 2017

The government is asking for views on options to give the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) stronger compliance, collection and enforcement methods to make sure parents are meeting their responsibilities towards their children.

The Child Maintenance Service was established in 2012 to replace the old Child Support Agency (CSA). Steps have already been taken to strengthen the action taken against parents who don’t pay the child maintenance they owe, including consulting on seizing unpaid maintenance from joint bank accounts.

The consultation proposals today include:

• removing passports – parents who persistently do not pay the child maintenance they owe could face being banned from holding or obtaining a UK passport for up to 2 years
• improved calculations – income from capital, foreign income, notional income from assets and unearned income could all be taken into account when the CMS works out how much maintenance a parent owes
• deductions from business accounts – the CMS could seize funds from sole trader and partnership accounts to pay off a parent’s unpaid maintenance bill.

The consultation also outlines proposals to address historic unpaid child maintenance built up under the old CSA, and options for writing it off. New analysis shows that it would cost the government £1.5 billion to collect the debt, most of which is owed on CSA cases where the children are now adults.

Minister for Family Support, Housing and Child Maintenance Caroline Dinenage said:

Our priority is to make sure parents meet their responsibilities to their children so we have been replacing the old CSA – which failed children over the decades – with a new system that is already working better for families. But we need to go further to ensure children get the support they need. That’s why we are consulting on a range of options, including tougher powers against parents who do not pay the child maintenance they owe.

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It follows enforcement action by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) against the companies known today as ‘Micronclean Limited’ and ‘Berendsen Cleanroom Services Limited’.

The specialist laundry services they supply include the cleaning of garments worn by people working in ‘cleanrooms’. These are highly sanitised environments used by businesses such as pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers as well as NHS pharmacies.

Both businesses had been trading under the ‘Micronclean’ brand since the 1980s in a longstanding joint venture agreement. In May 2012 the companies entered into new, reciprocal trademark licence arrangements under which they agreed not to compete against each other.

Under the agreement, Micronclean Limited served customers in an area north of a line drawn broadly between London and Anglesey, and Berendsen Cleanroom Services Limited served customers located south of that line. The companies also agreed not to compete for certain other customers, irrespective of their location.

Market-sharing arrangements like these are generally illegal under competition law. For customers, these arrangements prevented them from shopping around to get a better deal and that can lead to higher prices, less choice and less innovation in the market.

In reaching its decision, the CMA considered whether the wider joint venture between the companies, including any benefits which flowed from it, meant that these market-sharing arrangements were necessary or justified. The CMA concluded that they were not.

Ann Pope, CMA Senior Director for Antitrust Enforcement, said:

Market-sharing agreements are well established and serious breaches of competition law.

Organisations like the NHS rely on the cleanroom laundry services provided by these companies, but we have found the 2 biggest players were dividing customers between them, leaving those customers with very little choice in service provider.

Companies must regularly check their trading arrangements, including long-running joint ventures and collaborative agreements, to make sure they’re not breaking the law. The entry into new trade mark licence agreements in 2012 was an opportunity for the businesses to consider the competition law implications of their commercial arrangements.

Notes to editors

1. The CMA is the UK’s primary competition and consumer authority. It is an independent non-ministerial government department with responsibility for carrying out investigations into mergers, markets and the regulated industries and enforcing competition and consumer law. For CMA updates, follow us on Twitter @CMAgovuk, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn.
2. The suppliers involved were:
   • Micronclean Limited, known prior to 1 July 2016 as Fenland Laundries Limited (Fenland); and
   • Berendsen Cleanroom Services Limited, known prior to 15 September 2015 as Micronclean (Newbury) Limited (Berendsen Newbury).
3. The total fine for Micronclean Limited was £510,118. The total fine for Berendsen Cleanroom Services Limited was £1,197,956. As the parent company of Berendsen Cleanroom Services Limited for the latter part of the period during which the law was broken, Berendsen plc is jointly and severally liable for £1,028,671 of Berendsen Cleanroom Services Limited’s fine.
4. The case concerns the period from signature of the trademark licences on 30 May 2012 until the trademark licences were terminated and the related joint venture was disbanded on 2 February 2016.
5. The non-confidential decision will be published on the case page in due course following the redaction of commercially sensitive information.
6. The case came to the CMA’s attention in the context of 2 related merger reviews. The CMA investigated and cleared a merger between the joint venture vehicle then jointly owned by Fenland and Berendsen Newbury, ie Micronclean Limited (since re-named, as of 1 July 2016, Fenland Laundries Limited), and Guardline Technology Limited. The CMA also investigated a proposed merger between Fenland and Fishers Cleanroom, which was ultimately abandoned.
7. For more information on how to achieve compliance with competition law, see the CMA’s guidance for businesses. The CMA has also produced a series of animated videos explaining the main principles of competition law and how they affect small businesses.
8. Any businesses or individuals that have concerns about competition law can contact CMA by email (general.enquiries@cma.gsi.gov.uk) or by phone (020 3738 6000).
9. Media enquiries to the CMA should be directed to press@cma.gsi.gov.uk or 020 3738 6633.

The Charity Commission, the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales, has opened a new statutory inquiry into the Darren Wright Foundation (1167130). The investigation was opened on 29 November 2017.

The Bristol-based charity operates to relieve the needs of disabled people, people with life limiting illnesses and their families through the provision of grants and other financial support for life-changing operations.

The Commission engaged with the charity in August 2017 following the receipt of complaints from members of the public. These complainants, who included the families of beneficiaries of the charity, raised concerns about difficulties they had faced in communicating with the charity and accessing funds that had been raised on behalf of their family members.

The Commission has also experienced difficulties in communicating with the charity and has therefore been unable to adequately address a number of regulatory concerns identified through the public complaints and by way of the Commission’s own scrutiny. An inquiry has therefore been opened to specifically examine:

• the administration, governance and management of the charity by the trustees, with specific regard to the extent to which the trustees have:
  • acted in the charity’s best interests and in accordance with their duties and responsibilities under charity law
  • responsibly managed the charity’s resources and financial affairs
  • worked to avoid or manage conflicts of interests
• the extent to which the charity operates in furtherance of its charitable purposes for the public benefit
• whether and to what extent any issues or weaknesses in the administration of the charity:
  • were a result of misconduct and/or mismanagement by the trustees; and
  • require rectification by the trustees or the Commission.

The Commission stresses that opening an inquiry is not in itself a finding of wrongdoing. The purpose of an inquiry is to examine issues in detail, investigate and establish the facts so that the regulator can ascertain whether there has been mismanagement and/or misconduct; establish the extent of any risk to the charity’s property, beneficiaries or work and decide what action needs to be taken to resolve the serious concerns, if necessary using its investigative, protective and remedial powers to do so.

It is the Commission’s policy, after it has concluded an inquiry, to publish a report detailing what issues the inquiry looked at, what actions were undertaken as part of the inquiry and what the outcomes were. Reports of previous inquiries by the Commission are available on GOV.UK.

The charity’s details can be viewed on the Commission’s online charity search tool.

Ends

Notes to editors

1. The Charity Commission is the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales. To find out more about our work, see our annual report .
2. Search for charities on our check charity tool.
3. Section 46 of the Charities Act 2011 gives the Commission the power to institute inquiries. The opening of an inquiry gives the Commission access to a range of investigative, protective and remedial legal powers.