Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Child Maintenance Service takes to monitor the efficacy of its communication practices with service users.

We are committed to ensuring our communications with claimants are clear, accurate and understandable. Using customer insight, we continuously improve our letters and take into account all the feedback we receive, analysing complaints and customer calls to further understand and focus out improvement activity, including customer testing of the messages within our letters.

The Department Customer Charter provides the standard against which all aspects of service delivery are measured. Measurement against these standards is conducted via customer surveys are carried out regularly with customers across all contact channels and customers are asked specifically about our communication practices under the ‘easy access’ and ‘keeping you informed’ elements of the Charter. Customer satisfaction levels and feedback recorded against these measures are utilised to continually improve our services.