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30 Mar 2006 : Column 1198W—continued
Customer Performance Targets
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions which of his Department's customer performance targets are being missed on the basis of the latest available information; and if he will make a statement. [35690]
Mr. Plaskitt: The Department for Work and Pensions businesses each publish customer service performance targets. Their performance against current published targets is as follows. Information on the Rent Service and Health and Safety Executive has not been included, as they do not deal with individual customers.
Jobcentre Plus exceeded its 81 per cent. customer service target in 2004–2005, achieving 83.2 per cent. Its performance the year to date to the end of September 2005 is 84.8 per cent.
The Pension Service has two Customer Service targets:
That 92 per cent. of telephone calls to Centres in 2005–06 are answered by an agent. Current performance for the year-to-date to the end of October is 95.2 per cent.
That the percentage of calls to main 0845/0800 numbers receiving an engaged tone or message must be less than 1 per cent. in 2005–06. Current performance in the year-to-date to the end of October is 1.0 per cent.
The Child Support Agency has four customer outcome targets:
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Case compliance—child maintenance and/or arrears will be collected where there is a maintenance liability due to be paid through the collection service from 78 per cent. of new scheme and 75 per cent. of old scheme cases by the end of the reporting year. Current performance in the year to date to the end of September 2005 is 66 per cent. for new scheme and 72 per cent. for old scheme.
Cash compliance—to collect 75 per cent. of new scheme, and 68 per cent. of old scheme, child maintenance and/or arrears where there is a maintenance liability due to be paid through the collection service by the end of the reporting year. Current performance for the year to date to the end of September 2005 for old scheme is 71 per cent. and for new scheme is 61 per cent.
Accuracy—for the last action for all assessments on the old scheme checked in the year to be correct to the nearest penny in 80 per cent. of cases, and for the last decision for all new scheme maintenance calculations to be correct to the nearest penny in 90 per cent. of cases. Current performance for the year to date to the end of September 2005 for the old scheme is 80 per cent. and for new scheme is 83 per cent.
Debt/Arrears—To collect arrears equivalent to 30 per cent. of the amount accruing over the reporting period. At the end of September 2005, performance was currently exceeding the target at 36 per cent.
The Disability and Carers Service has three Customer Service Measurements, with 100 per cent. targets. The performance for the year-to-date to the end of September 2005 is:
96 per cent. of customers received a full or substantive reply to written queries within 10 working days.
97 per cent. of calls to the switchboard and 99 per cent. of direct dial calls were answered within 30 seconds and 99 per cent. of calls to the switchboard and 87 per cent. of direct dial calls were answered with the standard greeting and a name given.
The Appeals Service has four customer service standards:
We will reply to general enquiries by post, email and fax as soon as we can and 85 per cent. within 10 working days. For the period April to end of November 2005, sampling exercises have shown that we replied to 90 per cent. of correspondence with 10 working days.
We will respond to 85 per cent. of complaints and Ministerial correspondence within 15 working days. If we cannot, we will advise when we are able to do so together with the name and contact details of the person dealing with the response. For the period April to end of November 2005, we replied to 91 per cent. of administrative complaints within the 15 working day standard.
We will answer the telephone within 30 seconds in 95 per cent. of cases. A sample exercise showed that we answered 98 per cent. of telephone calls within 30 seconds between April and November 2005.
We aim to acknowledge arrival at the tribunal venue and the clerk will meet the appellant not less than five minutes before the hearing time to explain the procedure. A sample survey of appellants in January/February 2005 showed that 99 per cent. who attended a hearing were met not less than five minutes before the hearing time and had the procedure explained to them.
An update on Departmental performance was provided in our Annual Performance Report, which was published in the House in December 2005.
Departmental Costs/Staff
Mr. Salmond:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the (a) salary bill was and
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(b) administrative costs were for his Department in (i) each (A) nation and (B) region of the UK and (ii) London in 2004–05. [35871]
Mr. Plaskitt: The administration budgets regime overseen by the Treasury relates to Whitehall Departments only. How administration costs are controlled in the Devolved Administrations is a matter for them. Treasury do not monitor regional or central London administration costs separately.
The most recent Public Expenditure Outturn White Paper (CMD 6639) has information for provisional 2004–05 departmental administration costs outturn and the Departmental Report (CMD 6539) contains estimated 2004–05 pay bill outturn.
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much was spent on involuntary and voluntary staff exit schemes in (a) the Department and (b) each agency of the Department in each year since 1997–98; and if he will make a statement. [32429]
Mrs. McGuire [holding answer 28 November 2005]: Amounts spent by the Department on staff exit schemes since 1997–98 are set out in the table. The Department for Work and Pensions was formed in June 2001 from the Department of Social Security and parts of the former Department for Education and Employment including the Employment Service. Figures shown prior to financial year 2001–02 relate only to the former Department of Social Security.
| £ million | |
|---|---|
| 1997–98 | 76.7 |
| 1998–99 | 20.5 |
| 1999–00 | 20.2 |
| 2000–01 | 21.6 |
| 2001–02 | 18.4 |
| 2002–03 | 19.4 |
| 2003–04 | 16.1 |
| 2004–05 | 14.9 |
An analysis of the amounts spent by individual Agency is only available since the formation of the Department for Work and Pensions in 2001–02. Figures are set out in the following table.
Note:
n/a denotes that the Agency did not exist as an entity of the Department for the year in question.
Although not an Agency, the Corporate Centre has also borne the cost of exit schemes when staff working within the Corporate Centre e.g. Group Finance, HR
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areas have left the Department. Responsibility for exit scheme payments of the former Benefits Agency also transferred to the Corporate Centre when the Agency ceased to exist.
The Department is unable to provide a breakdown of these figures between voluntary and involuntary exit schemes.
Energy Efficiency
Mrs. Dorries: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what steps he is taking to increase energy efficiency within his Department; and if he will make a statement. [60331]
Mr. Plaskitt: The Department for Work and Pensions is fully committed to improving its energy efficiency in line with the Framework for Sustainable Development on the Government Estate. We are working in collaboration with our PFI Estates Partners, Land Securities Trillium, to install energy efficient equipment across the estate under our 'Spend to Save' investment scheme (including PIR lighting and water boiler controls, extra insulation and fridge/cooler controllers). We also maximise energy efficiency during the life-cycle replacement of plant and equipment. To complement this, a national awareness campaign to encourage all members of staff to play their part is ongoing, and the Department is working with the Carbon Trust under its Carbon Management Programme.
To further reduce CO 2 emissions, the Department has increased to 60 per cent. the percentage of electricity purchased from renewable sources such as wind power and Combined Heat and Power.
Progress against targets is reported in the DWP Sustainable Development Annual Report which was published in December 2005. A copy of this can be found on the DWP website at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/sus-dev/2005/sus-dev05.pdf.
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