In Brighton and Hove, we talk and think a lot about safety, equality and community and, as part of that, our violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy was launched in summer 2025 as was the Labour Party’s national strategy last month.
This city is a powerful voice championing rights for all. One of the most powerful tools for tackling violence against women and girls is hiding in plain sight: the way child maintenance payments are managed.
Direct payments were introduced by the coalition government in 2010. This Labour government announced in June 2025 that they will be changing the way payments are collected and paid, commencing in 2027-28.
Changing the direction of these payments so they go straight to the parent who is caring for the child may sound like a technical tweak. But, in reality, it is a frontline intervention against persuasive economic abuse.
Across the city, our voluntary and community partners report the same pattern. After a relationship ends, perpetrators use money as a way of exerting control.
When maintenance is supposed to be paid from the abusive ex‑partner, it has the power to become a lever of coercion.
Payments are delayed, withheld or drip‑fed with conditions attached. Survivors in Brighton describe this experience. The abuse does not stop when the relationship ends. It simply changes shape.
In a city where housing costs are among the highest outside London, the stakes are high. Unreliable maintenance can push women into rent arrears, food insecurity and the impossible choices between work, childcare and safety.
Economic abuse isn’t just about bank accounts. It is about limiting a woman’s freedom to rebuild her life, stay in stable housing or keep her children’s routines intact.
It’s about children going hungry or not having bus fare. It is about perpetrators not being accountable for their actions, refusing to see the children who are affected by this.
Changing this as one of the routes of post-separation control ensures that money intended for children reaches them, rather than being a bargaining chip.
This is a simple reform with profound impact.
This strengthens families, supports children and removes a key tool of coercion. In a city that values fairness and refuses to look away from abuse, we see this policy of redirecting maintenance payments as not just good policy but as being the right thing to do.
This is social policy in action. It’s not empty gestures about protecting women and girls. It’s action where it is most needed.
If you are in anyway concerned about economic abuse for yourself or someone you know, please speak in confidence either to someone at Surviving Economic Abuse or someone at Money Advice Plus. Either will be able to help.
Councillor Sam Parrott is a Labour member of Brighton and Hove City Council and leads on tackling violence against women and girls.
