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Uncorrected Evidence 251
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SELECT COMMITTEE
PUBLIC SERVICES: PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST
Thursday 1 March 2007
Q67 David Heyes: It is the repetitive nature of the complaints that is so frustrating to us. There seems to be no learning taking place. We will resolve some ourselves, as MPs, and then ultimately they get referred on to the Ombudsman. The casework MP helpline facility is good but I do not get any sense that there is any kind of feedback for the organisation to learn from what takes place there, the admission of failing. You have talked in general terms about the need to make things better, to get more systematic. You have said you have improved procedures in place. I do not have any sense of what that is. What things have you been doing that are going to have a really dramatic impact on this still appalling figure of 90,000 you just mentioned?
Mr Gray: Could I give you two or three examples, and I can give you some more later if you want, of the sorts of things we have done, largely in response to complaints - and of course complaints are not the only feedback we are getting, but where complaints have played a significant part. We have now introduced a much simplified, two-page version of the tax credit award notice, reflecting a lot of the concerns we have been having. We have introduced a much shorter tax return for self-assessment taxpayers. We had a lot of complaints that everybody was getting the 40-page version, that this was unnecessary for large numbers of people and could we not think of a way of introducing something for people whose circumstances required self-assessment but were relatively straightforward. We introduced a two-page version which is now getting a 95 % positive rating in our research. We have introduced a simplified statement of account for self-assessment once an assessment has been made and, again, that has had a very welcome response. On telephone lines, for example, we do of course have quite a lot of people dealing with us phoning from overseas. Our standard phone lines, 0845 numbers, were not readily accessible to people calling us from overseas, so we have now introduced a dedicated phone line there. These are the sorts of things we have been doing.
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Parliamentary update (Read 528,784 times)
