Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
FOI Reference: FOI/202300344650
Date received: 22 February 2023
Date responded: 22 March 2023
Request
The longest call wait time for connected calls from claimants recorded since the establishment of Social Security Scotland in 2018.
The number of calls whereby the claimant has had to wait for more than 30 minutes in order to be connected. Please provide data from 2018, with a breakdown by year.
Response
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not hold some of the information you have requested.
To provide the data requested, we were required to run reports from our telephony system, and as such the data provided below is drawn from management information. The system only holds data for the 12 rolling months prior to the requested report - for any time period prior to that point the information is not held.
The time period provided includes the launch of several new benefits including Adult Disability Payment, Winter Heating Payment, and the expanded Scottish Child Payment. As such, demand for telephony services has increased significantly.
Call wait times for connected calls from February 2022 to February 2023 are provided in the below table.
| Call wait time | Number of calls | Percentage of calls |
|---|---|---|
| 30 minutes or less | 330396 | 74.06% |
| 30 - 59 minutes | 87340 | 19.60% |
| 60 - 119 minutes | 28001 | 6.28% |
| 120 - 179 minutes | 279 | 0.06% |
| Over 180 minutes | 1 | 0.00% |
| Total | 446107 | 100% |
The system has one recorded call wait time above 180 mins, our records indicate the longest call waiting time as 3 hours 7 minutes and 25 seconds.
This client wait time is not reflective of the overall position with more than 93% of the over 445,000 calls received being connected within 60 minutes.
About FOI
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