Pension Service (Telephone Calls) (Hansard, 22 March 2004)

§ Mr. Webb

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many and what percentage of telephone calls to(a) the pension credit application line and (b) the Pension Service which were not classed as

Table 1: Calls to pension credit application line: April 2003—February 2004
	Calls answered within 30 seconds	Calls receiving engaged tone or recorded message that all agents are busy	Calls abandoned
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
April 2003	17,675	94.29	0	0.00	975	4.69
May 2003	32,733	99.94	10	0.03	18	0.05
June 2003	57,731	99.95	1,790	2.88	386	0.64
July 2003	112,014	95.34	3,047	2.78	948	0.80
August 2003	177,338	97.51	7,255	3.87	313	0.17
September 2003	352,283	92.60	18,540	4.01	15,794	3.69
October 2003	429,954	95.20	2,854	0.62	13,370	2.77
November 2003	302,399	99.68	990	0.31	2,831	0.89
December 2003	183,646	99.78	32	0.02	1,165	0.60
January 2004	429,668	93.79	123	0.02	12,079	2.44
February 2004	372,932	92.71	185	0.04	11,839	2.73

Table 2: Calls to the Pension Service: September 2002–March 2003
	Calls answered	Calls abandoned	Calls engaged
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
September 2002	403,784	92.1	35,357	8.0	3,946	0.9
October 2002	460,373	92.1	40,091	7.9	5,394	1.1
November 2002	688,659	92.1	68,410	5.7	444,083	37.3
December 2002	522,656	89.1	67,391	7.2	344,485	37.0
January 2003	673,753	86.9	109,601	13.6	33,057	4.1
February 2003	607,083	89.3	74,174	6.2	514,357	43.1
March 2003	734,955	90.4	76,882	4.4	920,733	53.1

Table 3: Calls to the Pension Service: April 2003–January 2004
	Calls answered	Calls answered within 30 seconds	Calls abandoned	Calls engaged
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
April 2003	567,101	91.1	n/a	n/a	71,947	7.8	303,825	32.8
May 2003	610,728	83.3	n/a	n/a	122,771	9.4	572,388	43.8
June 2003	750,360	86.6	n/a	n/a	116,575	10.2	278,937	24.3
July 2003	792,427	87.8	n/a	n/a	110,083	8.9	329,937	26.8
August 2003	704,052	89.1	444,135	69.9	90,325	9.1	182,213	1.2
September 2003	882,761	90.1	535,341	68.2	97,195	9.0	99,611	1.5
October 2003	1,043,354	94.5	664,233	78.1	58,062	5.2	5,961	0.1
November 2003	1,178,443	92.2	581,373	67.6	100,239	7.7	7,568	0.4
December 2004	1,097,450	93.0	519,152	70.1	78,984	6.6	1,283	0.1
January 2004	1,235,864	92.2	584,810	63.8	103,342	7.7	3,471	0.3

Notes:

1. In Table 1, the number of calls receiving the engaged tone or a recorded message was unusually high in September due to technical problems with the telephony at one particular site. The number of calls affected by these problems cannot be separated out.

2. The figures in Tables 2 and 3 do not include calls to the pension credit application line

3. For The pension service, numbers of calls answered within 30 seconds are only available from August 2003

4. In all three tables, the numbers of calls answered, abandoned and engaged are not calculated on precisely the same basis and in some cases the columns will add up to more than 100 per cent.

570W

engaged or abandoned were answered within 20 seconds in each month since it was established; how many and what percentage of attempted telephone calls to each reached an engaged tone in each month since it was established; and how many and what percentage of telephone calls to each were abandoned in each month since it was established. [160352]