Letter from Miss Ann Chant to Ms Liz Lynne, dated 29 January 1996:

I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about the take on of Child Support Agency cases deferred in December 1994.

The special take on of such cases in November and December 1995 was as follows:

• November 1995—292
• December 1995—178

As you are aware at the time of deferral some 340,000 cases were affected. The Secretary of State set the Agency a milestone target to commence the take on of these cases by the end of 1995. We formally started taking on the remaining cases in November last year, but in practice had already dealt with many of them because the parent with care had either specifically asked us to do so, or had made a repeat claim to a prescribed benefit, and had therefore been treated as a new claim.

I expect the rate of special take on of deferred cases to remain steady for the remainder of the financial year.

I hope this is helpful.

Letter from Miss Ann Chant to Ms Liz Lynne, dated 29 January 1996:

I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about telephone calls made to the Child Support Agency.

The numbers of incoming calls made to Child Support Agency Centre Client Help Lines and the National Enquiry Line for the period requested are set out in the attached table.

I hope this is helpful.

Letter from Miss Ann Chant to Ms Liz Lynne, dated 29 January 1996:

I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about changes made in the arrangements for answering incoming calls received in the Child Support Agency.

To improve customer services, management decided to centralise the National Enquiry Line and to create a section within each Child Support Agency Centre (CSAC) that would deal solely with incoming calls.

The National Enquiry Line based in Liverpool became fully operational on 21 June 1994 and the Central Call Handling sections with Automatic Call Distribution equipment within each CSAC were fully operational on the following dates:-

• Belfast: 8 August 1994
• Birkenhead: 8 August 1994
• Dudley: 11 July 1994
• Falkirk: 5 September 1994
• Hastings: 1 August 1994
• Plymouth: 22 August 1994

I hope this is helpful.

Letter from Miss Ann Chant to Ms Liz Lynne, dated 29 January 1996:

I am reply to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security asking how the totals for reduced benefit directions (RBD) imposed by each Child Support Agency Centre were arrived at in Official Report, column 894 of 18th December 1995.

I do apologise that having looked again at the totals detailed for the RBD section of the tables provided in the above report, I can see that they were wrong. The sum shown at the bottom of these particular columns is not the the total of the individual figures in them.

I have enclosed an updated version of the full tables supplied by way of answer to your Parliamentary Question set out in Official Report, column 894. You will note that the relevant columns do now show their correct totals. I am very sorry I did not spot this error in my previous reply.

I hope this is helpful.

(a) Australia, (b) New Zealand and (c) North America. [11805]