Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: Correspondence

(asked on 15th October 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to improve her Department's response times to correspondence from members of the public.


Answered by
Julia Lopez Portrait
Julia Lopez
Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
This question was answered on 25th October 2021

The government recognises the importance of responding to members of the public in an effective and timely manner, and the Cabinet Office published an updated Guide to Handling Correspondence for government departments and agencies in July 2021.

The guidance reasserts the standards for handling correspondence, including a 20 working day deadline for departments to respond to members of the public, criteria outlining when a response to a member of the public is required, and when a piece of correspondence from a member of the public should be transferred to another department. Following publication of the updated guidance, all departments have been reminded that they must follow the processes outlined in the guidance.

DCMS has taken a number of steps to improve response times. These include increasing the size of its correspondence team and improving internal reporting measures.

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