Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the response times to queries made to the Child Maintenance Service by service users.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) are committed to delivering the best possible service to all customers within our growing caseload.

Through the Service Modernisation Programme, CMS is expanding digital channels and self-service options, including online tools like Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance and My Child Maintenance Case (MCMC), available 24/7. It has improved speed of communications via use of SMS, email, and clearer letters, and introduced online messaging for certain processes, with plans to extend this further.

Our telephony service is available to 8am to 6pm on weekdays to meet demand. We continuously monitor telephony performance and through this fully recognise that call waiting times are at times longer than we would like. To address this, we are working to improve the efficiency of our customer interactions through both the telephone and digital channels. We have introduced a Digital Assist Telephony Service, which has been a significant step forward in our mission to support and encourage customers to use our online services.

We restructured our call routing to make more caseworkers available to answer telephone calls. By promoting self-service options online and efficient call routing, we have freed up valuable resources to deliver a more responsive service and allow caseworkers more time to better assist customers who need to reach out to us via telephone.

CMS continues to exceed key performance indicators, including application clearances, change of circumstances clearances, demonstrating improved outcomes for customers.