Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what his Department's current average call wait times are for individual members of the public contacting the Office of the Public Guardian.

The current average call wait time is 22 minutes and 18 seconds. This figure is for calls received during the week of 20th to 24th March 2023. The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) has taken a number of steps to improve call wait times. Additional staff have recently been recruited, are being trained and are expected to start taking calls in April 2023. When customers send in Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPA) applications, they now receive acknowledgment letters, which has reduced the number of calls to check on application progress. OPG also identified the most common queries customers were calling about, and introduced a FAQs section on its phone lines. These steps have enabled other calls to be answered more quickly, and OPG remains committed to reducing call waiting times further.