Impact Assessments
Improved Pension Credit application process (race) – July 2006
The objective is to improve the Pension Credit application process as part of the Pensions Transformation Programme (PTP).
The Main Activities:
- Information from other sources will be used to pre-populate customers’ claims to Pension Credit, and combined claims to State Pension and Pension Credit can be taken in one telephone call.
- Customer spoken language needs will be identified and recorded for future contact with customer.
- Through improved training, on-line guidance and scripting, customers will experience an improved service around the identification and response to their spoken language needs.
- Letters output to support the Pension Credit application have been redesigned to be more customer friendly.
- An improved service for customer representatives.
- Customers’ ethnicity will be asked for on claiming State Pension and/or Pension Credit.
- To eliminate the need for customers to sign the claim form following an application to Pension Credit by telephone.
- To advise customers, when possible, of their provisional entitlement to Pension Credit at the end of the telephone call.
- The overall end-to-end clearance times for Pension Credit claims will be quicker.
- Customers’ additional communication service needs will be asked for and held for future contact with the customer.
- Automation of large print process and improved Braille service.
- Customers can be taken through a Pension Credit application immediately after a State Pension claim. The Pension Credit application will also contain the pro-active taking of Housing Benefit/Council Tax Benefit claim details. This will be issued to the customer for them to check before sending to their Local authority.
Evidence and Consultation
PTP consulted customer representative groups including the Partnership Against Poverty forum and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Policy and Strategy forums, to obtain customer insight to the design of the new claims process.
Changes were tested with ethnic minority customers and concluded that there will be no adverse or disproportionate impact. There will be a positive impact on ethnic minority customers as once their spoken needs have been taken; any future contact will be handled automatically in the customer’s preferred language. As such they will benefit from an improved customer experience.
In future The Pension Service will have access to information showing customers’ ethnicity. As a consequence The Pension Service will be able to target specific customer groups to offer appropriate products and services to individuals and carry out evaluations in order to improve services.
Impact
This screening stage of an Impact Assessment has identified that there is no direct or indirect adverse impact upon ethnic minorities. There is no evidence of any disproportionate effect on any ethnic group as a result of these changes. In addition, opportunities to improve relations with ethnic minority groups, and to improve equality of opportunity for The Pension Service customers, have been exploited, and the changes support a long-term plan to take these improvements further.
Monitoring
The impact of these changes will be monitored through customer survey and mystery shopping and results published through the annual report of The Pension Service.