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Northern Ireland Office

Answer

Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many telephone calls were made to the customer help line of (a) the Eastern Business Unit and (b) the Northern Ireland Operations of the Northern Ireland Child Support Agency (i) in 2003-04 and (ii) in 2004-05 to date; and how many such calls were abandoned. [208573] Mr. Spellar: The information is as follows: Eastern Business Unit In 2003-04 around 770,000 telephone calls were received in the part of the Child Support Agency's national helpline that is situated in Belfast. Many of these calls represent the same customer redialling because of delays in making a connection. In 2003-04 around 350,000 of these calls were abandoned. We considered this performance unacceptable and invested additional resources in the National Helpline. The year- to-date figures for 2004-05 are around 800,000 received and around 170,000 abandoned. Against the Agency's target of "no more than 20 per cent. of telephone calls to be abandoned" Eastern Business Unit's year to date performance is 20.19 per cent. Work is continuing in this area to further improve performance. Northern Ireland Operations In 2003-04 there were around 86,000 telephone calls to the Northern Ireland customer help line and around 15,000 abandoned calls. The year to date number of calls in 2004-05 is around 87,000 and the number of abandoned calls is around 14,500. Against the Agency target of "no more than 20 per cent. of telephone calls to be abandoned" the Northern Ireland year to date performance is 16.8 per cent.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

208573; 430 c1599-600W

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Children Maintenance Northern Ireland Standards Telephone services Telephones Northern Ireland Child Support Agency

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk