Social Security Scotland call waiting times: FOI release

Information requested

Request for information 1: The number of calls whereby the claimant had to wait for more than 30 minutes in order to be connected. Please provide data from 1 July 2023 to 31 July 2024. Please provide this information in a table with a breakdown by call wait time, the number of calls and percentage of calls.

Request for information 2: The longest claimant call wait time recorded between 1 July 2023 to 31 July 2024.

Response

Request for information 1:

To provide the data requested, we require to run reports from our telephony system. Our system only holds data for the 12 rolling months prior to the requested report.

Some of the information you have requested is available from a prior Freedom of Information release: Social Security Scotland - Information relating to claimant call wait times: FOI release. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Please find the remainder of the requested information in the below table:

10 July 2023 - 31 July 2024
Period	Number of calls	Percentage of calls	Average wait time
Under 30 mins	706,249	90.5%	00:14:23
30 to 60 mins	71,240	9.1%
Over 60 mins	3,053	0.4%
Total	780,542	100%

This information is based on internal management information and has not yet been quality assured to the same standard as published information on telephony services.

Request for information 2:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not hold information for the period 1 July 2023 to 9 July 2023 due to our system only holding data for the 12 rolling months prior to the requested report.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested.

Our records indicate the longest wait time in the period 10 July 2023 to 31 July 2024 is 1 hour 57 minutes and 26 seconds.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.