HC Deb 13 February 2004 vol 418 c218W
Mr. David

To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs what plans he has to improve the efficiency of the Public Guardianship Office. [154816]

Mr. Leslie

The Public Guardianship Office (PGO) expects to meet almost all of its key service delivery targets this financial year, and plans to set more challenging measures for next year so that, among other things, it answers a higher percentage of correspondence within target and deals with applications more efficiently. During 2004–05, the PGO will focus on quality improvement further to increase customer satisfaction in its services. A review of how complaints are handled has recently been initiated.

Mr. David

To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs what assessment he has made of the efficiency of the Public Guardianship Office. [154822]

Mr. Leslie

The Public Guardianship Office (PGO) experienced severe service delivery problems during 2002–03 resulting in a large number of complaints (1,338 for the year) and key performance measures being missed. It has addressed these problems, so that this year numbers of complaints are well below those from the previous year (456 to end December 2003) and the PGO is on track to achieve almost all of its key performance measures at the end of March 2004.