KPIs for reconsiderations and disputes

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Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

Please provide any Key Performance Indicators which apply to DWP around the handling of mandatory reconsiderations of benefit decisions, especially turnaround time.

Please also provide historic performance against these indicators.

Yours faithfully,

B. Tann

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DWP Business Intelligence PQ and FOI Central Team, Department for Work and Pensions

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Dear Brian Tanning,

Please find attached acknowledgement of your freedom of information request which has been allocated the reference number FOI 1740

Regards

DWP Communications Team
Department for Work and Pensions | Financial Control Directorate | www.dwp.gov.uk | Please consider the environment before printing

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DWP Business Intelligence PQ and FOI Central Team, Department for Work and Pensions

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Dear Brian Tanning,

Please find attached response to your Freedom of Information request

Regards

DWP Communications Team
Department for Work and Pensions | Financial Control Directorate | www.dwp.gov.uk | Please consider the environment before printing

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Richard Taylor left an annotation ()

The FOI response provided states that during reconsiderations of benefit decisions the DWP has a key performance indicator stating 80% of the original decisions are to be upheld.

There has been discussion of this FOI response at:

https://sirhenrybrooke.me/2017/05/15/man...

There has also been discussion on Twitter, including a suggestion that the performance being measured (or influenced?) by the indicators is that of the original decision makers rather than the reviewers:

"I was part of a review team and this is slightly misleading. It's not siding with DWP, tge target is 80% of original decisions should be...upheld. If the KPI isn't met, it's not the review team under scrutiny, it's the original decision makers"

https://twitter.com/Vague_Biscuit/status...
https://twitter.com/Vague_Biscuit/status...

Dear DWP Business Intelligence PQ and FOI Central Team,

On 20th April, I made an FOI request as follows:

>Please provide any Key Performance Indicators which apply to DWP around the handling of mandatory >reconsiderations of benefit decisions, especially turnaround time.
>
>Please also provide historic performance against these indicators.

and received your response:

>The key measures which are used by the Department for Work and Pensions to monitor
>Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) performance are:
>
>a) 90% to be cleared within target.
>
>b) 80% of the original decisions are to be upheld.
>
>The performance measures for April 2016 - March 2017 are:
>
>% MR Cleared within target = 70.2%
>
>% MR Original Decision Upheld = 87.5%
>Notes:
>Upheld - percentage of MRs where the decisions have either been unfavourable to the claimant
>or where the previous decision has been maintained.

Thankyou for providing this information. However some of it is unclear. I hope you will be able to clarify:

1. What is the 'target' referred to? If it changes, would you please let me know what it has been over different periods?

2. The note: - which decision does 'where the decisions...' refer to, and which do 'the previous decision' refer to? The most likely reading seems to be that 'the decisions..' refer to the MR decisions being counted, and 'the previous decision' refers to the decisions which those MRs request reconsideration of. Unfortunately the language is not completely clear without context, so I would be grateful for clarification.

3. Which department's performance is measured against this KPI, particularly part b)? Again, there is a most obvious reading, which is that it is the department /s which undertake MR decisions, which then presumably do not also make the original decisions which they are then reconsidering. However, the language is again not completely clear without context.
NB -
For the sake of the clarity of what I am myself asking- I realise that 'department' could mean a number of different things in different organisations, but I am asking about any unit or subunit which is separable by function, so it may be more a 'grade' than a 'department' (eg senior decision makers, rather than decision makers).

4. Who is accountable within the DWP for their performance, as measured against these KPIs?

Yours sincerely,

Brian Tann

DWP Business Intelligence PQ and FOI Central Team, Department for Work and Pensions

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Dear Brian Tanning

Please find attached acknowledgement to your Freedom of Information Request. This request has been given reference number FOI 2283.

Regards

DWP Communications Team
Department for Work and Pensions | Financial Control Directorate | www.dwp.gov.uk | Please consider the environment before printing

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Operations FOI Requests, Department for Work and Pensions

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Mr Tanning
 
Please see copy of your FoI request attached
 
 
 
 

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Frank Zola left an annotation ()

Victory for claimants as Government agrees to reform PIP & ESA process

13 December 2017

In response to pressure from the Work and Pensions Select Committee the Department for Work and Pensions has announced that its target for upholding original PIP and ESA decisions at the first stage of appeal, known as Mandatory Reconsideration (MR), will be dropped.

http://www.parliament.uk/business/commit...