Department for Work and Pensions: Complaints
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in each of the last 5 years, a) how many complaints have been made to his Department, b) how many of those complaints have been referred to the Independent Case Examiner, and c) how many of those referrals have resulted in payments or additional payments being made to the complainant.
Answered by Andrew Western
a) The Department publishes a quarterly series of Official Statistics including DWP complaints received, closed and upheld by each business area, and categorisation of the reason for complaint:
DWP Complaints Statistics to September 2025 - GOV.UK
The number complaints received in each quarter from September 2020 to September 2025 are available in Table 1 of the accompanying data tables:
The next release of the Official Statistics will be published in March 2026, containing data to 31 December 2025.
b) The Independent Case Examiner (ICE) publishes an Annual Report each year. The reports include data relating to complaint intake volumes. The Independent Case Examiner’s Annual Reports are available on gov.uk.
DWP complaints: Annual reports by the Independent Case Examiner - GOV.UK
c) ICE is unable to confirm how many cases it recommended DWP pay financial redress for prior to 2023/24 as its data retention policy means this data is no longer available.
Of the investigations ICE concluded in 2023/24, ICE recommended DWP pay financial redress in 1,388 cases. In 2024/25, the volume of cases where ICE recommended financial redress be paid by DWP was 1,332.
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