PIP waiting times and best times to call

From the DWP -

The current average speed of answer for PIP telephony for August 2022 was 25mins 44secs. This obviously does fluctuate but is comparable to the 2 previous months also.

Please note the best times to call are usually:-

Monday 9am to 12pm
Tuesday and Wednesday 9am to 12pm
Thursday and Friday 9am to 1pm

It taken me over an hour this morning to get through and the same yesterday!

While working from home I discovered that the best time to call any DWP department is after 4 pm.  This is probably because many CABx and WR organisations finish at 4.

Do they keep track of the waiting times for different options?

Waited 40 mins for general enquiries yesterday, whereas MR option was answered immediately. Both calls around 10am.

The discussion is ludicrous really. We accept delays as the norm and lap up some small detail which might make our lives and that of claimants a tad easier when really we should be shouting from the rooftops that these delays simply ought not exist. Very easy to forget or become blase about the profound impact this has on people’s lives; health and income. Sitting for an hour on the phone can impact all manner of things that it simply ought not.

The phrase “... due to unexpected demand” is a nonsense. At this point DWP know the number of calls they get. They know when they get calls and they know what the delays are. From that it should be possible to calculate how many staff are needed in order to reduce delays to under 1 minute. Piece of work for someone who fancies bunging in some FOIs too. 

DWP have been keeping an eye on the forum and have commented -

We are in the process of putting some information together as we are very aware of the wait times and in recent weeks due to the Cost Of Living announcements coupled with the additional unplanned Bank Holiday following the death of our Queen, the wait times continue to be higher than we would have expected.

I’m hoping to invite stakeholders to a conversation mid to the end of November to go through the updates and also discuss the impact of progress chasing calls that organisations might support us with ie we are endeavouring to process as speedily as possible etc.

I’ll keep you posted and send more info in advance of the invites going out.

I’ll update when I hear further

Did they offer an explanation for 2013 onwards?

“Exasperated face”.

Daphne - 11 October 2022 03:40 PM

DWP have been keeping an eye on the forum and have commented -

We are in the process of putting some information together as we are very aware of the wait times and in recent weeks due to the Cost Of Living announcements coupled with the additional unplanned Bank Holiday following the death of our Queen, the wait times continue to be higher than we would have expected.

I’m hoping to invite stakeholders to a conversation mid to the end of November to go through the updates and also discuss the impact of progress chasing calls that organisations might support us with ie we are endeavouring to process as speedily as possible etc.

I’ll keep you posted and send more info in advance of the invites going out.

I’ll update when I hear further

Can you ask DWP to look at the Pension Service processing delays thread when they have a minute please Daphne (oh and also maybe the AA Unit might be worth looking at as well as they seem to be in freefall recently).

Talking to some of our staff yesterday and having clocked recent MS Teams conversations I suspect a big issue brewing at CA also.

Several examples of CA ceasing on death but CA treating it as a suspension. As it’s not closed then UC treat CA as income; award CE and… well you know where this all goes. Trying to get CA on the phone and have a coherent conversation to resolve has literally in one case required phone calls every working day until the veil lifted. I presume CA telephony is out-sourced? Don’t know as it’s some years since I’ve needed to talk to them at all.

Still comes back to the same issue. At this point in time there is no way DWP do not know the demand. Out-sourced or not, keeping people who are often on PAYG mobiles waiting for more than a couple of minutes is despicable and especially in the current climate.

Waiting times to get through to ESA are also pretty dire. And the computerised security questions part of the wait is guaranteed to drive anyone into a rage.

I know this is not PIP, but my colleague just spent 2 hours 15 minutes on hold to ESA, (a new PB!) to complete an IS10 form over the phone to get someone their SDP…
Our current theory is that the ESA office is staffed by one man and his dog these days (see also - cases taking 2 months plus to get their SDP awarded).

I’ve just been chasing up the issue on delays on PIP line to see if there is hope for improvement - this is the reply -

Unfortunately yes we are aware of the continued longer wait times and we are addressing this by bringing in more resource.  You may recall I forwarded detail of one of our recruitment campaigns via OSEF and we are currently bringing in these new recruits.  We currently have another recruitment campaign running too.

We are in the process of training all new recruits in telephony on a rolling programme and we are expecting to see improvements in due course.

Can I also just remind you of the offer of my team to support you with complex/vulnerable customers if you are in the position of having exhausted every business as usual avenue and urgently need a case resolving.  I am happy these cases are sent direct to me and I will assign someone of the team to pick up but I must stress, this is for extremely vulnerable customers with an urgent need.

If anyone does have a case that meets the bottom paragraph then please do email me so I can pass details on, but also bear in mind that you must have exhausted all the usual avenues first. If you email me, please detail what action you have taken so far - thanks.

At OSEF this morning we were told that they have recruited 250 more staff who are currently getting embedded. They said phone answering times have improved dramatically in last 2 weeks so hopefully will begin to see this.

However, they reiterated that if any really bad cases they will look into it so DM / email me if you have any of those and I will pass details on

I was advised that they have a staff turnover rate of (as best I can recall) 100% i.e. for every person they recruit they lose one and are no better off. Was also advised that there were no plans to recruit additional staff and that the focus would be on IT solutions e.g. machine learning; chat bots etc.

So, when I read about 250 more staff the question for me is very much about how many existing staff were lost during the recruitment period.

Hello
Is anyone else having major issues with PIP phone lines - Tuesday I pressed for SR and ended up elsewhere (after 39 min wait), but they managed to put me through to SR. Today my colleague has been cut off twice.
Thanks

Yes, almost routine at this point.

Then again last week I wasted something like three hours trying to speak to the HMCTS contact centre whilst watching their brief video about what a fabulous service they offer. The cognitive dissonance may be frying my brain.