Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
FOI Reference: FOI/202300370932
Date received: 10 August 2023
Date responded: 6 September 2023
Request
Request for information 1: The average waiting time for phone calls to be answered by Social Security Scotland since 2018. Please provide a breakdown by year.
Request for information 2: The longest waiting time for a phone call to be answered by Social Security Scotland since 2018. Please provide a breakdown by year.
Response to your request
Request for information 1:
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have all of the information you have requested. To provide the data requested, we require to run reports from our telephony system. 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.
We do publish Insights reports which give average call waiting times across different periods.
From September 2018 to 23 March 2020 the average call wait time was 16 seconds across all benefit queues - Supporting documents - Social Security Scotland: insights research findings to March 2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
Between 4 July 2020 to 29 March 2021, the average call wait time was 10 minutes and 58 seconds across all benefit queues - Social Security Scotland - Insights Research findings - April 2020 to March 2021
From 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022, the average call wait time was 5 minutes and 51 seconds across all benefit queues - Social Security Scotland - Insights Research Findings – April 2021 to March 2022
The relevant publication for 2022-2023 will be issued alongside our annual reports and will be published during the week commencing 23 October 2023.
Request for information 2:
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested. To provide the data requested, we require to run reports from our telephony system. 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. In our response to Freedom of Information request 202300344650, (Social Security Scotland - Information relating to call waiting times: FOI release), we confirmed the longest call wait time since February 2022. That remains as the longest call wait time since that time.
About FOI
Social Security Scotland is committed to publishing responses to requests. The Scottish Government also publishes responses to requests. You can view the responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.