Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many calls to the Pension Service helpline (a) were not answered, (b) involved the caller being on hold for more than 10 minutes and (c) were terminated by the Pension Service following the caller being on hold for more than 10 minutes in each month between January 2015 and January 2024.

DWP does not have a specific enquiry line called the Pension Service Helpline, so I have provided the data from the State Pensions enquiries line.

Over the period 1 February to 30 April 2025 a total of 28,775 calls were not answered due to caller abandonment. A monthly breakdown shows February 6,696; March 16,960 and April 5,119. The percentage of calls answered over these 3 months on average shows Feb 92%, March 84% and April 94%, against an expectation of 90%. A total of 67,736 callers were on hold for more than 10 minutes with the monthly breakdown showing February 9,082, March 51,746, April 6,908. No calls were terminated by DWP.

We do not hold the data before June 2023 and therefore have based our answer on the period from 1st June 2023 to 31st January 2025. In this data, calls not answered were due to caller abandonment. No calls were terminated by DWP.

The information provided here is based on internal management information which is not intended for publication and has not been quality assured to official statistics standards.