Pensions: Advisory Services

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many home visits have been carried out by the Pension Service in each year since 1997, broken down by type of visit and local area. (141831)

The information that is available for the area of East Sussex is in the following table. I will write to the hon. Gentleman with information on the remaining areas and a copy of my letter will be placed in the Library of the House.

*Home visits carried out by the Pension Service*
	Nationally	East Sussex
2004-05	549,369	—
2005-06	954,359	—
2006-07	897,702	9,687
Notes: 1. All visits are ‘Holistic Visits’ so whatever the reason for referral a full benefit entitlement check is undertaken. 2. The Pension Service Local Service was created in April 2004. 3. There are occasions when a follow up visit is requested by the pension centre to clarify some aspects of the application; however these are not recorded separately. 4. The number of visits at a cluster level is held on the Local Service System (LSS). The East Sussex cluster figures for the years 2004-05 and 2005-06 are not available because of data protection issues which means customer data 18 months from the date the referral is cleared. Source Local Service Management Information.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the cost has been of the Pension Service’s outbound telephone campaign. (141876)

The information requested is not available. Outbound calls from the DWP are not broken down by campaign.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment he has made of the effect of the Pension Service’s (a) method of home visits, (b) outbound telephone campaign and (c) strategy of identifying harder-to-reach customers by working with local partners on take-up of services. (141878)

The information that is available is in the following tables.

*Effect of home visits, 2006-07*
	Number
Visits made	897,702
Claims to various benefits	¹481,434
¹ This includes claims made following Information Point appointments. There were 57,522 Information Point appointments during 2006-07. Source: Local Service Management Information.

*Effect of the outbound telephone campaign, 2006-07*
	Number
Calls made	189,434
Awards of Pension Credit	21,340
Source: “Contacts by Channel” and “Management Dashboard” report 2006-07.

Joint Working Partnerships targeting harder-to-reach groups are currently being evaluated and the findings will be available in the autumn.

Volume 462: debated on Thursday 28 June 2007