How and where people report changes

Having identified a change in circumstances, claimants must then inform the Benefits Agency either by calling at a local office, telephoning, writing, or by getting a third party to act on their behalf. We know that the Benefits Agency is concerned to i mprove the quality and efficiency of contacts with local and central offices as part of its general drive towards quality of service and also as contributing to the medium- term objective of providing a one-stop service. In particular there is a continuing investment in changes to telephone reporting (reported in Chapter Six). This emphasis reflects the findings from the first two National Customer Surveys (1991 and 1992) that telephoning is the most common form of contact with Benefits Agency offices, followed by calling in person (for local offices only) and finally by writing. However, as we pointed out in the literature review (Sainsbury, Ditch and Hutton, forthcoming), this overall picture changed when we used the National Customer Survey data to look solely at how people report changes in circumstances to the local office. The data in the two Customer Survey reports are presented slightly differently, but a re-analysis of the data in the 1991 version suggested that calling in person was the most common

means of reporting a change in circumstances to a local office, followed by telephoning and writing.

In our survey of Income Support recipients we asked how they normally contacted the local office about their social security business. The responses showed exactly the same pattern as the Benefits Agency customer surveys; telephoning was most common, followed by calling in person and writing. However, when we asked how they reported changes in circumstances a different pattern emerged. Table 5.21 below presents data derived from two questions about reporting in the questionnaire. We asked how people informed the local office about their most recent reported change and about the change occurring nearest to 1 November 1992. The table also shows, for comparison, how respondents normally contacted the office.

Table 5.21: Method of reporting changes in circumstances compared with normal method of contact

Method of reporting Most recent Change nearest to Normal method of reported change 1.11.92 contact

% % % Writing 39 44 10 Telephoning 12 10 39 Calling in person 34 33 36 Other' 15 12 15 N 346 217 1,082 1

Includes getting someone else to inform the office Source: Survey

The table shows a clear contrast between how people normally contacted the local office and how they chose to report changes in circumstances. The telephone is a generally popular means of dealing with the Benefits Agency but not for reporting changes even though 69 per cent of the sample said that they had access to a telephone. Further analysis showed that claimants who normally wrote to the office continued to do so if they had a change to report. By contrast, 40 per cent of the nolntal telephone users switched to writing, and 20 per cent to calling in person. Although the figures for callers remains fairly constant across the table, a quarter of the normal callers wrote to the office when reporting a change. Unemployed claimants tended to call in person in preference to writing but lone parents, pensioners and disabled claimants all tended to write more than call. The unemployed also used the telephone less than the other claimant groups.

There are several implications of this analysis. First, it must be recognised that, at present, improvements in the telephone service offered by local offices will not improve the efficiency with which changes in circumstances are reported for most claimants. If telephone reporting is to become the preferred method of the Agency, then claimants need to be weaned away from other methods of contact. Even if the majority of telephone owners can be persuaded to use the telephone more, there will still be a sizeable minority for whom telephoning is not an option. Other means must be found for them to improve the efficiency of reporting changes.

In the survey questionnaire we asked respondents who they notified about changes in their circumstances. This is an important issue, particularly for the one-stop policy initiative since it is the aim that claimants should only need to report a change to one part of the social security system (whether it is a local or central office or part of the Employment Services organisation). The responsibility would then be on officials and not claimants to notify any other relevant branch of social security. (This is being actively pursued in the developments on telephone reporting-see Chapter Six.) The data generated in the survey do not allow any reliable statistical analysis, since the number of cases where changes were reported to places other than the Benefits Agency were small. For example, of the 58 reports of changes of address, 57 were to the Benefits Agency and only one to the Employment Service. However, this absence of examples in itself indicates that among our representative sample of Income

Support recipients there was not a widespread problem of reporting to inappropriate locations. Having said that, it should be remembered that those most likely to report changes to the Employment Service are unemployed claimants who formed less than a third of the sample.