Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department has made an assessment of the effect on constituents of being unable to make telephone contact with the appropriate Child Support Agency administrative office to discuss their case; and if he will make a statement.

During the 2016/2017 operating year, there have been two issues with the Child Support Agency telephone system which impacted client calls. These were (1) Monday 07 November 2016 from 16:30 to 20:00 with some client calls cut off; and (2) Monday 20 February 2017 from around 11:00 to 19:30 an issue with the IT system meant we needed to deploy a telephone call plan requesting clients call back the following day.

These faults were resolved quickly minimising impacts on our clients. During the 2016/2017 operating year 97.4% of calls were answered within 60 seconds.

The Child Support Agency telephony system has an intelligent call routing system which utilises details input by the client to direct them to their Caseworker. If for some reason the Caseworker isn’t available the telephony routing redirects the caller to a different Caseworker with the correct skills to help the client.