Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how her Department monitors (a) feedback and (b) complaints from universal credit claimants.

Feedback from customers, including insight we gather from complaints, is an important source of learning for DWP.

This includes Universal Credit (UC), where claimant feedback is carefully considered in order to continually refine the UC service and ensure it works for all. Our design teams conduct user research with both our claimants and our staff to identify improvements to the service and to test out planned changes with customers before they are implemented.

The Customer Experience Directorate plays a key role in coordinating learning within the Department, and the Department uses this data to inform decision making. More information about how we do this is available in our 2020/21 Annual Report and Accounts:

HC 422 – Department for Work and Pensions – Annual Report and Accounts 2020-21 (publishing.service.gov.uk)

This includes DWP’s Customer Experience Survey, which seeks customer feedback about their experience with DWP. This is a survey of customers who have had recent contact with DWP and includes UC claimants.

The most recent findings from the survey are available here, and the findings from the 2020/21 survey will be published in due course.

DWP claimant service and experience survey 2018 to 2019 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)