Department for Work and Pensions: Telephone Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average (a) waiting time for people calling and (b) time people spent on hold for (i) Job Centre Plus, (ii) the Universal Credit helpline and (iii) the Personal Independence Payment helpline was in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrew Western
The table below shows the Average Speed of Answer and Average Hold Time for all people calling (i) Job Centre Plus, (ii) the Universal Credit helpline and (iii) the Personal Independence Payment helpline in each of the last 4 business years, with 2024 to 2025 being to date only (01/04/24 to 27/10/24). We are only able to provide a breakdown of the Average Speed of Answer for 5th business year 2020/2021, we do not hold that breakdown of data for Average Hold Time, this was only reported at DWP level prior to 2021.
Please note for part(i) of the request, figures provided are from Job Centre enquiry line only. DWP hierarchy does not have a telephony service line for Job Centre Plus.
Reporting Year | Product Line | Average Speed of Answer (hh:mm:ss) | Average Hold Time (hh:mm:ss) |
2020-2021 | Jobcentre Enquiry Line | 00:01:02 | N/A |
Personal Independence Payment | 00:18:15 | N/A | |
Universal Credit | 00:03:41 | N/A | |
2021-2022 | Jobcentre Enquiry Line | 00:02:03 | 00:00:59 |
Personal Independence Payment | 00:18:10 | 00:00:25 | |
Universal Credit | 00:05:09 | 00:00:41 | |
2022-2023 | Jobcentre Enquiry Line | 00:02:34 | 00:00:40 |
Personal Independence Payment | 00:19:21 | 00:00:29 | |
Universal Credit | 00:02:56 | 00:00:21 | |
2023-2024 | Jobcentre Enquiry Line | 00:01:52 | 00:00:37 |
Personal Independence Payment | 00:17:33 | 00:00:42 | |
Universal Credit | 00:02:45 | 00:00:13 | |
*2024-2025 | Jobcentre Enquiry Line | 00:01:21 | 00:00:33 |
Personal Independence Payment | 00:11:35 | 00:00:40 | |
Universal Credit | 00:03:24 | 00:00:09 | |
*year to date 01/04/2024 to 27/10/2024 |
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DISCLAIMER
Please note this information is derived from the Department’s management information, designed solely for the purpose of helping the Department to manage its business. As such, it has not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics. As DWP holds the information internally, we have released it. However, it is possible information held by DWP may change due to operational reasons and we recommend that caution be applied when using it.
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