A DESPERATE father was found hanged from a tree weeks after writing to the Child Support Agency (CSA) threatening to kill himself, an inquest heard yesterday.

Peter Phillips was paying the agency almost a quarter of his wages and struggled to make ends meet, the coroner was told.

In the run-up to Christmas 2004, Mr Phillips was in so much debt to the agency that he told his mother, Barbara, he could not even afford a carton of milk.

At the time of his death in July last year, he was paying £54 a week out of the £230 he received as a forklift driver.

A railway maintenance worker found the 45-year-old's body hanged from a tree at the side of a track on the edge of the Arlington estate, in Loftus, east Cleveland.

In a suicide note he left at his flat in the High Street, Loftus, Mr Phillips said: "If you go to the woods today you are sure to find me there. I have had enough, can't take no more."

His brother, Gary, said after the inquest: "I am angry. The CSA hounded him. He was living on nothing."

Last night, a spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions offered its sympathy to the family.

But the spokesman added that the CSA had a responsibility to ensure both parents supported their children financially.

Workmate Alan Garbutt told Teesside Coroner Michael Sheffield: "His problems tended to be about money. From day one it was how much the CSA was taking from his wages.

"From £230 a week, they took out £54, taken out of his wages at source. To compensate for that he would work overtime.

"In addition to this, he had been separated from his ex for a number of years and lived alone without a girlfriend.

"He had a son and he doted on him and loved him very much. He would see him quite often at weekends."

Mr Phillips threatened to end his life in a letter to the agency, about six weeks before he died.

Mr Garbutt said Mr Phillips had told him that he had written to the CSA saying he "would do himself in" if it did not reduce his payments.

"He said he was only frightening them to make them do something about it," said Mr Garbutt.

"Although I did not take what he said seriously, I did talk and advise him on how to manage his money situation."

Mr Sheffield recorded a verdict that Mr Phillips killed himself. He said: "Things got on top of him."

Mr Phillips asked in his suicide note that his son be told: "I love him, but it's time to go. It's not easy on your own."

Mr Phillips' mother, Barbara Powell, 71, said: "I gave him £3,000 when he came up at Christmas (2004) because he was in difficulties.

"He told me: 'I can't even afford a carton of milk'."

She said Mr Phillips would give his son pocket money out of the cash he had left over.

She added that monetary problems with the agency began for her son when the firm he worked for in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, in the early 1990s switched over to short-time working.

She revealed that her grandson had stayed two or three days a week with his father, who had moved home to be near him.

* Private debt collectors are to be used to recover money from parents who fail to pay child support, it was reported last night.

The BBC said the debts, worth more than £3bn on paper, would be sold to private firms to collect. They would take a share of the collected debt, with the rest handed on in child support payments.

Reports say ministers have backed the debt collection move "in principle". But the Department for Work and Pensions said the claims were "pure speculation".

It is also thought the new Revenue and Customs agency could take on the task of collecting regular child support payments.