PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(3 February 2025)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many calls to the Pension Service helpline (a) were not answered, (b) involved the caller being on hold for more than 10 minutes and (c) were terminated by the Pension Service following the caller being on hold for more than 10 minutes in each of the last 12 months.

Asked by:
Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat)

Response:

Part (a)

The table below shows the total number of unanswered calls (Calls Abandoned from Agent Queue) for The Pension Service, for each of the last 12 calendar months.

Month Year	Directorate	Calls Abandoned from Agent Queue
Feb-2024	Pension Service	60,495
Mar-2024	Pension Service	56,400
Apr-2024	Pension Service	72,485
May-2024	Pension Service	36,733
Jun-2024	Pension Service	24,900
Jul-2024	Pension Service	23,709
Aug-2024	Pension Service	25,554
Sep-2024	Pension Service	36,407
Oct-2024	Pension Service	36,412
Nov-2024	Pension Service	31,481
Dec-2024	Pension Service	23,077
Jan-2025	Pension Service	34,704

Part (b) The department does not hold data that enables us to answer this question.

Part (c) The department does not hold data that enables us to answer this question.

There are many reasons why calls to a service line can attract a high call abandonment rate which can include but is not limited to increased hold times. The abandonment of calls is an area that we are unable to fully analyse as there is no data to tell us exactly why a specific customer terminates a call. We are continuously monitoring the service and reviewing our approach to ensure we are able to deliver for our customers.

DISCLAIMER

Please note this information is derived from the Department’s management information, designed solely for the purpose of helping the Department to manage its business. As such, it has not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics. As DWP holds the information internally, we have released it. However, it is possible information held by DWP may change due to operational reasons and we recommend that caution be applied when using it.

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