The administration of the Child Support Agency is the matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.
Letter from Stephen Geraghty, dated 21 February 2008:
In reply to your recent parliamentary question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the results of outsourcing of Child Support Agency work with particular regard to (a) response times and (b) quality of work delivered. [183913]
As part of the Operational Improvement Plan, the Agency contracted out some of its enforcement work to private debt collection agencies, Eversheds LLP and iQor, and the management of our clerical case load to Vertex Data Science Ltd.
Although the Agency has contracted out the maintenance of its clerical cases to Vertex Data Science Ltd, the performance targets set by the Secretary of State apply to all Child Support cases, regardless of whether they are clerical or not.
In addition, the Agency's Client Service Standards apply to cases maintained by Vertex Data Science Ltd.
Formal monthly governance arrangements are in place to measure and discuss Vertex performance against these targets and standards. Weekly meetings between Vertex and Agency operational managers also take place to track performance.
The number of cases that need to be processed clerically is larger than was initially expected. Consequently, in order to ensure we maintain a good standard of service to our clients, we returned some of the cases being handled by Vertex to our other centres. This process began in July 2007 and was completed in September 2007.
The Agency now retains responsibility for clerical cases until the first payment stage, including processing some cases previously passed to Vertex (CSA Bolton) which were awaiting initial assessment and payment scheduling. Thereafter, these cases will be sent to CSA Bolton to ensure on-going maintenance compliance.
These changes have allowed Vertex to focus on case maintenance, keeping more money flowing to more children, and have resulted in an improvement in the service offered to clients.
The forthcoming upgrade to the CS2 computer system will result in a significant reduction in the number of cases that need to be processed clerically. The process will be re-assessed at that point.
I hope you find this answer helpful.