Employment Service Appeals Procedure (Hansard, 19 October 1999)

§ Ms Jowell

Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its Chief Executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from Richard Foster to Mr. Lembit Öpik, dated 19 October 1999: As the Employment Service is an Executive Agency the Secretary of State has asked Leigh Lewis to reply to your question concerning statistical information about appeals received by the Employment Service over the last three years. This is something, which falls within the responsibilities delegated to Mr. Lewis as Chief Executive of the Agency. I am replying in his absence. It may be helpful, by way of background, if I first explain a little about the Employment Service appeals procedure. Decisions on doubtful claims to Jobseeker's Allowance are made by Employment Service Adjudication Officers. If a jobseeker wishes to appeal against a decision given by the Employment Service Adjudication Officer, they complete a form giving their reasons for appeal. The Adjudication Officer then re-examines the case, collects any further information that may be required from the jobseeker and the employer, and either revises the decision in the jobseekers favour or 545W prepares a written submission to The Appeals Service, which is not part of the Employment Service. On receipt of the submission, The Appeals Service allocates a date when the case can be heard by an appeals tribunal and deals with all subsequent administration such as notifying the jobseekers of the outcome of the appeal. Against this background, the following table shows the number of appeals received by the Employment Service over the last three operational years.

Operational year	Number of appeals received by the Employment Service
1996–97	18,628
1997–98	30,312
1998–99	19,261

The following table shows the number of appeals received as a percentage of all the decisions given by Employment Service Adjudication Officers.

Operational year	Percentage of decisions appealed against
1996–97	1.2
1997–98	2.8
1998–99	2.2

In answer to your question on what was the average time that cases referred to the Employment Service Appeals Procedure took to be resolved, the only information available on speed of process is the length of time appeals take to be processed by the Employment Service. The following table shows the length of time between the appeal being made by the jobseeker and processed by the Employment Service Adjudication Officer either by revising the decision in the jobseekers favour or referring the appeal submission to The Appeals Service.

	Percentage of appeals processed within the stated periods
Operational year	Up to 28 days	29-56 days	Over 57 days
1996–97	90	8	2
1997–98	83	13	4
1998–99	86	12	2

As you will see, it is split into three periods, appeals processed within 28 days of receipt, those processed between 29 and 56 days after receipt and those not processed within 57 days. Because Employment Service Adjudication Officers often need to obtain further information from the jobseeker on receipt of an appeal, it is unusual for a decision to be revised or a submission to be prepared and referred to The Appeals Service immediately on receipt. On occasions these enquiries can be protracted which means that the Employment Service Adjudication Officer is not in a position to process the appeal quickly. However, the Employment Service sets performance targets to encourage appeal submissions to be processed as quickly as possible. These are that 70% of appeals must be processed within 28 days and 85% within 56 days. The Employment Service does not collect information on the time the appeal subsequently takes to be allocated a hearing date and resolved by The Appeal Service. Finally, I am sorry that the Employment Service does not keep information on the numbers of appeals, which were withdrawn before the Appeals Tribunal made a decision. This would be a matter for The Appeals Service which is the responsibility of the Department of Social Security. You may also be interested to know that from 18 October the appeals procedure will be changing with the implementation of the new Decision Making and Appeals arrangements. I hope this is helpful.