MP urges DWP not to miss ‘bigger picture’ over complaints
Commenting on the publication of the Commons public accounts committee report on how the Department for Work and Pensions handles complaints, South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon, a member of the committee, said:
“Jobcentre Plus and the Pensions, Disability and Carers Service are executive agencies of the Department for Work and Pensions. In 2007-08, these agencies recorded 70,000 complaints about their services.
“The trouble is that these two agencies only recorded a fifth of the complaints that customers say they made.
“These unrecorded complaints may have been addressed quickly and easily, but they could also have provided an early warning of poor service, communications failures or more serious problems ahead. By not recording complaints properly, the Department may well be missing the bigger picture and it should take steps to sort this out.”
Mr Bacon was speaking as the Commons public accounts committee published its report on how the Department for Work and Pensions handles complaints. Jobcentre Plus and the Pensions, Disability and Carers Service are executive agencies of the Department for Work and Pensions. In 2007–08, they provided services to over 22 million customers and around 70,000 complaints were recorded by the agencies.
The number of customers who say they have complained is about five times the number of complaints recorded by the Department. This outcome may reflect low-level complaints which are resolved quickly and go unrecorded as a result but the Department has no consistent system across its operations for recording complaints. The Department is planning to research why under-recording is occurring and it is currently piloting a simplified system of recording complaints with the intention of moving to a common system.
25 March 2009
See also:
PAC REPORT:
Handling of complaints by the Dept. for Work and Pensions
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