FOI-02123

Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

Please confirm the following for the Employer Helpline, the Scheme Member Helpline and the Pensions Online Helpdesk for the period 1st April 2024 to 30th June 2024 inclusive on a month by month basis:  

1. Total Calls Received  

2. Longest Waiting Time  

3. Shortest Waiting Time  

4. Average Waiting Time 
 
5. Total Abandoned Calls  

6. Total number of "Complaints" received regarding the above Helpline service(s)’  

As per your most recent response, (FOI 01846 dated 2nd May 2024 refers) you state "Complaints are now categorised more generally relating to the main subject of the complaint"

Please provide the information in the same format as FOI 01846 dated 2nd May 2024.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 29 July 2024.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000. 

##Our response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information is attached.

Questions 1 to 5 have been included on the attached data. Please note that the data provided is in seconds.

Question 6

We have reviewed the Complaints Performance Dashboard – Complaint Drivers and for the period of April – June 2024 we have 5 complaints that have been completed which have been recorded with a Sub-Category of ‘Call Handling’. 

We have included both informal complaints and also formal complaints raised under the Internal Dispute Resolution Procedure, information regarding the formal complaints procedure can be found at the following link Contact NHS Pensions - members | NHSBSA  pl(both Stage 1 and stage 2 of this procedure have been included in the numbers provided).(both Stage 1 and stage 2 of this procedure have been included in the numbers provided).

Please note, we only record what has been determined to be the ‘primary’ driver for a complaint being raised, i.e. there may have been multiple issues on a case such as issues accessing their Annual Benefit Statement, but the main driver of the complaint was regarding a delay in payment.

To confirm the total number of complaints received whereby the helpline services were not the ‘primary’ driver, but were still an element of the complaint, would require manual review of each compliant held to confirm any additional complaints which fall under the scope of this request. We estimate that the cost of compliance with this part of the request would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12 of the FOIA. 

We estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The limit has been specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving, extracting and checking the information.  

Please see the following calculations which sets out the estimated cost for compliance with this request:

It is reasonably estimated it would take approximately 5 – 10 minutes to manually review each complaint file to confirm if an element of the complaint is in relation to call handling of the helpline services.

This estimate is based on the following actions which would be required:

•	Identify the membership number of all complaint cases – this should be held either in the background of the complaint dashboard or via other reports (potentially WFM)

•	Enter member record

•	Open member EDM file

•	Locate the complaint/IDR!/IDR2 received on the file

•	Read through the complaint to ascertain if any part of the complaint would be in relation to the helpline.

The timeframe of 5/10 minutes is given as this would be variable based upon the size of the complaint. In addition, there may be both a complaint and IDR1 or a IDR1 and IDR2, for example in the period for a specific member; however, these would need to be reviewed independently as the different stages of the complaints process are treated on their own merits and a complaint may slightly evolve throughout the process.

There are 609 cases which would need to be manually reviewed:

609 x 5 = 50.75 hours

609 x 10 = 101.5 hours

Consequently, we estimate it would take around 50.75 – 101.5 hours to comply with this request and therefore, outside of the 18 hours to comply with the request.

In accordance with the duty to advise and assist under section 16 of the FOIA 2000, please be advised that we wouldn’t be able to refine the scope of the request to fit within the appropriate limit; however, we can confirm that there are 5 complaints recorded I the timeframe whereby ‘call handling’ is the primary complaint.

Publishing this response

Please note that this information will be published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02123 

Your personal details will be removed from the published response.

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing, the data please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ 

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “NHSBSA Copyright 2024” Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.

Tags: NHS Pensions
Organization: Freedom of Information Disclosure Log