Home Office Responses to Correspondence from the General Public

HL Deb 19 March 2003 vol 646 cc31-2WA

Baroness Knight of Collingtree

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Further to the Answer by Lord Bassam of Brighton on 26 February (HL Deb, col. 237), what is the performance for Home Office responses to correspondence from the general public. [HL2061]

Lord Filkin

The Home Office is targeted with answering 95 per cent of public correspondence within 20 working days. This is one of the agreed public service agreements (PSA) for central government.

The Home Office performance against this target for the period April 2002 to February 2003 for non-immigration matters currently stands cumulatively at 90 per cent within 20 working days. The monthly performance over the last six months is as follows:

September 2002:	91 per cent
October 2002:	90 per cent
November 2002:	94 per cent
December 2002:	93 per cent
January 2003:	93 per cent
February 2003:	92 per cent

Thus, performance against target over the past six months averages 92 per cent.

No performance data are held currently for public correspondence on immigration and nationality matters. This will be addressed when the new correspondence tracking system is further developed to operate on IND systems later this year.