| Campaign to spur the DWP into remedying their shameful inertia now. |
|
|
|
| Written by Administrator | ||||
| Wednesday, 28 February 2007 | ||||
Page 1 of 2  Loan Ranger is interested to hear about your RECENT experiences of trying to get through on the helpline to a Crisis Loans Assessor:
Did the ansaphone bottleneck cause you grief you would like to tell me about? Please contact Loan Ranger and tell me about these or any other problems you encountered. My reasons for making this campaign. In the beginning I didn't know that it was going to become a campaign, all that I wanted was to obtain a simple answer from JC+ to a simple question, however, this turned out to be less straight-forward than I could ever have imagined. What I did get from JC+ was faulty advice, obstruction, obfuscation, one of the staff contradicting herself and another who let it slip out that ansaphone misery was even more widespread than I had thought. I came away with the impression that JC+'s stealth may be masking an edict with political undertones from an element beyond their influence, and hence, there were now many more questions for which I sought answers. Consequently, I directed my attention towards Government Ministers, M.P.s' and Senior Civil Servants. Of course I couldn't expect to get anywhere near those éminences grises with my queries, however this was not an impediment because reports from the "Comptroller & Auditor General" and the "House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts" are available on the internet for reference, and these are a handy source of facts, figures, and witness statements. Unfortunately, when under examination, Senior Civil Servant witnesses can prove very adept at spin doctoring and dodging questions. Particularly tough questions get deflected by various ploys: E.g. Saying this, "...requirements and systems are not consistent with..." (this one's good for we can't and won't collect statistics / data / information etc. indicative of poor performance.) Another ploy is, when the statistic specific to one narrow 'problem aspect' of services is unspeakably bad, is that of incorporating it within the same statistic relative to the entirety of DWP services, i.e. burying the bad news inside irrelevant better news, as is, selective quoting of C & AG's more positive statistics and comments out of context to the original question. Quoting from the C &AG's report, Department for Work and Pensions: Delivering effective services through call centres (HC 941, Session 2005-2006) the DWP claims that 84% of customers attempting to call the Department's contact centres are successful at getting through to speak to an agent. In regard to Crisis Loans WE KNOW THIS IS FAR FROM BEING THE CASE. I've watched as my neighbour re-dialled dozens of times to no avail and I've been told by a JC+ advisor of another customer who recently kept trying for two entire days. Furthermore, (again from HC 941) the DWP claims that the average clearance time for loans is below 1.5 days, however they take in no account of calls being blocked and for how long. Customer surveys show a high level of satisfaction with the service provided when they get through, I think the "when they get through" bit says it all! |
||||
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 03 October 2007 ) | ||||
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|