Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information his Department holds on the number of complaints received by (a) Capita and (b) other external assessors for Personal Independence Payment applications in each of the last five years.
The department manages the PIP contracts robustly and has a full set of service level agreements setting out our expectations for service delivery.
It is important for providers to have their own complaints process to deal with dissatisfaction about the service they provide. This process signposts complainants to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) if they are dissatisfied with the provider’s final response to their complaint.
The process is designed to ensure that those complaining about third party provision have access to the same complaint escalation route as those who complain about services provided by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This encourages providers to resolve complaints at the earliest opportunity. It also gives providers the right incentives to offer good customer service and to comply with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s Principles of Good Complaint Handling.
In each of the last five calendar years (2019 to date), the total number of cases where Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessment providers (APs), Capita and Independent Assessment Services (IAS), received a complaint, are shown in the table below.
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 to date |
Capita | 2800 | 1390 | 1380 | 1380 | 1580 |
IAS | 6140 | 2800 | 2390 | 1760 | 1830 |
Please note:
- All volumes have been rounded to the nearest 10.
- All above data is derived from contractual management information produced by the APs.
- The above data is derived from unpublished management information, which is collected for internal departmental use only, and has not been quality assured to Official Statistics Publication standards.
All APs strive to provide an excellent service to claimants and are held to account for their performance. To put the above figures into context, the total number of complaints shown as a percentage of all completed assessments for the same period, are as follows:
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 to date |
Capita | 1.24% | 0.74% | 0.76% | 0.56% | 0.57% |
IAS | 0.87% | 0.51% | 0.41% | 0.24% | 0.23% |
Please note:
The above percentages have been derived from the unrounded totals.