State Retirement Pensions: Females

(asked on 2nd November 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 1 November 2018 to Question 185131 on Independent Case Examiner, if she will publish that same information for complaints by women on the equalisation of the state pension age.


Answered by
Guy Opperman Portrait
Guy Opperman
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
This question was answered on 12th November 2018

Individual departments have set up complaints procedures. That approach has not changed under Labour 1997-2010 or successive governments. The DWP has a two tier complaints process which considers formal complaints about our service. Once a complainant has exhausted the DWP complaint process they are signposted to the Independent Case Examiner’s Office if they are dissatisfied with the final response to their complaint.

The Independent Case Examiner is independent, and discusses complaints. The Independent Case Examiner is appointed under contract to adjudicate on escalated complaints about the DWP, and its contracted service providers, in cases where the complainant has exhausted the relevant internal complaints process and remains dissatisfied. If a complainant is dissatisfied with the outcome of an I Independent Case Examiner investigation (or the service provided by the Independent Case Examiner) they can ask their Member of Parliament to escalate their complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

The table below provides details of the number of complaints concerning the equalisation of women’s state pension age, that have been (a) received; (b) accepted for investigation and (c) resolved by the Independent Case Examiner in each month since January 2017 (we have interpreted (c) as a request for the number of concluded complaint examinations).

At the end of October 2018, there were 865 such cases awaiting a decision on whether the complaint could be accepted for investigation, which explains the drop in the number of cases accepted for investigation since April 2018.

Month

Complaints received

Complaints accepted for investigation

Concluded complaint examinations

January 2017

2

1

0

February 2017

26

5

0

March 2017

211

187

0

April 2017

172

157

0

May 2017

171

148

0

June 2017

144

124

1

July 2017

222

185

0

August 2017

290

243

0

September 2017

297

232

0

October 2017

418

338

3

November 2017

320

265

6

December 2017

222

177

4

January 2018

314

254

11

February 2018

240

210

28

March 2018

171

132

16

April 2018

196

2

11

May 2018

159

2

15

June 2018

147

2

30

July 2018

131

0

13

August 2018

108

5

14

September 2018

101

1

15

October 2018

119

0

14

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