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 Susan Park:
In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive. As the Chief Executive is currently on annual leave, I am responding, with his authority, on his behalf. You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many telephone calls to the Child Support Agency (a) were received and (b) received the engaged tone in each month since July 2005. [200817]
The number of telephone calls made to the Child Support Agency which received an engaged tone from July 2005 to March 2008 is included in the attached table.
Further information on the Agency's telephony performance is available in Table 16 of the Child Support Agency Quarterly Summary of Statistics, a copy of which can be found in the House of Commons library or on the internet at the following link:
www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/child_support/csa_quarterly_mar08.asp.
The Agency has shown significant and sustained improvement in telephony performance under the Operational Improvement Plan. In the year ending March 2008 the Agency received 5,369,000 calls from clients and answered 98% of calls available to be answered, with an average waiting time of twenty seconds, and with less than 1% of calls receiving an engaged tone.
Month Client telephone calls Number of telephone calls which received an engaged/busy tone 2005 July 424,938 459 August 446,532 238 September 506,576 7,438 October 486,362 22,483 November 459,380 748 December 344,854 1,568 2006 January 478,522 1,937 February 433,721 276 March 488,739 1,168 April 381,253 649 May 439,567 11,353 June 445,730 17,570 July 428,291 6,976 August 412,352 2,024 September 446,578 3,476 October 450,290 2,019 November 440,177 3,408 December 329,109 494 2007 January 501,330 10,681 February 428,770 300 March 507,266 1,361 April 430,195 99 May 469,008 1,340 June 469,811 6,295 July 470,183 2,184 August 447,142 674 September 447,620 63 October 489,968 147 November 467,329 345 December 332,005 406 2008 January 515,566 772 February 470,003 2,127 March 445,518 266 Notes: 1.Information includes old system (CSCS) and new system (CS2) telephone calls. 2. The agency does not limit its system capacity to take calls and service providers have assured the agency of sufficient trunk capacity. Clients will only hear an engaged tone as the result of a technical fault usually at network level. Clients hearing an engaged tone will often redial immediately and unwittingly add to the problem. Certain months have seen a disproportionately high number of such incidents.