Asked by: Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to improve his Department's response times to correspondence from members of the public.
Answered by Michael Ellis
The Government recognises the importance of responding to members of the public in an effective and timely manner. To that end, the Cabinet Office published an updated Guide to Handling Correspondence for Government Departments and Agencies in July 2021.
The guidance reasserts the standards for handling correspondence including: a 20 working day deadline for departments to respond to members of the public, criteria outlining when a response to a member of the public is required, and; when a piece of correspondence from a member of the public should be transferred to another department. Following publication of the updated guidance, all departments have been reminded that they must follow the processes outlined in the guidance.
In the Cabinet Office, we continue to prioritise timely responses to correspondence from members of the public - despite a significant increase in case volumes. We also keep our processes under continuous review to further improve the time taken to respond.