Child Support Agency (Hansard, 28 January 1999)

§ Angela Eagle

The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the Chief Executive, Mrs. Faith Boardman. She will write to the hon. Member.

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Letter from Faith Boardman to Mr. Mike Hancock, dated 27 January 1999: I am replying to your Parliamentary Questions to the Secretary of State for Social Security about applications to the Child Support Agency for compensation, normally referred to as special payments. I am not able to provide all of the information in the precise format that you have requested, but have provided as much as is available. A special payment is considered where a clear and unambiguous error by the Agency has resulted in an actual financial loss to the client which is not recoverable through other means. Each case is carefully considered on its individual merits and depending on the complexity of the case, the length of time required to reach a decision can vary considerably. We have a discrete unit to deal with applications for special payments. This ensures that each case receives individual attention and helps achieve fairness and an appropriate standard of consistency in an essentially discretionary scheme. The difficulties that we faced as an Agency during our first two years of operations are well documented. We built up a substantial backlog of cases awaiting maintenance assessment, and the accuracy of the assessments we completed was not up to the standard we would hope to achieve. Tackling the backlog of cases awaiting a maintenance assessment and bringing cases up to date has been a major priority for us this year, and the result of this has been an increase in the number of applications for special payments. We recognise that the length of time taken to deal with special payments in some instances has been protracted and we have taken steps to address this over the last twelve months. In December 1997 we reorganised the way we handle special payments and streamlined procedures with the aim of resolving special payments more speedily. We set an internal target to clear applications to special payments within 30 working days of receipt. Prior to establishing the new unit, applications were taking in excess of 90 working days to be dealt with. However as we began to clear our backlog of cases the number of applications for special payments rose significantly. From January 1997 to November 1997 we received 2,253 applications and from December 1997 to December 1998 we received 8,080 applications. Initially we were not able to meet the target we had set ourselves of clearance within 30 working days. Between April 1998 and June 1998 the average clearance time was 51 working days. More recently we have improved on our performance and the average clearance time for new applications between October 1998 and December 1998 was 8 working days. The number of applications which we received before 1st May 1998 and which are at various stages of action is 410. We expect to have cleared these applications by the end of 1998/99. We acknowledge that in the past our basic levels of customer service have been unacceptable and we are sorry that our failings may on occasion have caused inconvenience, frustration, distress and financial hardship. We are very conscious of the importance of applications for compensation but the number of applications is small compared with our overall caseload of over 827,000 live and assessed cases. It has risen as a result of the increases in the Agency's current workloads and of our recent actions to clear the backlog of maintenance applications which had accumulated in the Agency during its first 2–3 years. In 1997/98 the Agency cleared 595,000 maintenance applications compared with 357,000 in 1996/97 and reduced the number of maintenance applications over 52 weeks old from 225,000 to 110,000. We recognise that by improving our underlying service and efficiency we can avoid the need for such applications. We expect to clear the rest of the backlog of maintenance applications over 52 weeks old by the end of 1998/99. To improve our customer service in other areas we have reviewed the way that we handle complaints and we have increased resources for our Client Helplines and the National Enquiry Line. Also we have extended our hours of opening to cover 8.00am to 8.00pm Monday to Friday and 9.00am to 5.00pm on Saturdays and carried out trials to greatly improve and increase clients' opportunities to 319W secure a face to face service. Through these measures our aim is to deal with clients' problems at an early stage and prevent problems escalating. We recognise and have started to address the problems we have in delivering an acceptable level of customer service. Where we discover we have made mistakes or caused delay we will apologise to our clients and do everything we can to put things right as quickly as possible. I recognise that we have a long way to go to remedy our problems fully, but I am confident that our clients will continue to see improvements in the service they receive by the end of 1998/99 and beyond. I hope this is helpful.