Complaint handling
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DWP have the equivalent of about 108,000 full-time staff, serving over 20 million customers at any one time. Each working day they visit 3,000 customers in their own homes and answer 300,000 telephone calls. Consequently, it is unrealistic to expect administrative perfection from them – things will go wrong sometimes. However, when things do go wrong, DWP should try to ‘put things right’ as quickly as possible, in keeping with the Principles of Good Administration. This entails a willingness to acknowledge when things have gone wrong; to apologise promptly and sincerely; and to consider carefully all relevant factors to provide an appropriate remedy. We consider this to be a significant issue.
Effective complaint handling has a number of very important benefits, not least of which are that it is a valuable source of learning for the organisation and the speedy resolution of complaints is a more effective use of public funds. Time and effort spent defending the indefensible is time and effort wasted. Unfortunately, we continue to see a number of complaints where a complaint to our Office could have been avoided had DWP recognised their mistake, apologised and put it right sooner.
‘This whole situation is stressful and distressing for both my partner and myself’
Mr T complained about the Child Support Agency
