Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to improve the Child Maintenance Service's complaints procedure.

DWP introduced a single tier complaint model in 2020-2021 to ensure the process of making a complaint in DWP was simple and consistent for our customers. The single tier model put complaints handling back into specialist complaints teams, enabling the Department to build capability and improve its complaints handling.

We have also launched a new Complaints Quality Standards Framework, implementing quality assurance measures that align with the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman’s (PHSO’s) complaints standards to embed consistency into our complaints handling.