Policy paper

The Home Office response to the ICIBI report 'An inspection of the Handling of Complaints and Correspondence from Members of Parliament by the Home Office Borders, Immigration and Citizenship System (BICS) and Directorates'

Published 8 July 2020

The Home Office thanks the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) for his report.

We are grateful for the ICIBI’s engagement with staff in the areas inspected, and for setting out the recommendations in his report. We welcome his proposals on how to improve complaint handling across the BICS to ensure all business areas consistently meet service standards and quality remains high at the same time.

We are pleased the report notes and identifies examples of where things have improved since the 2015 inspection and the 2017 re-inspection. For example, improvements in performance in responses signed by ministers (or by a BICS Director General) in the second half of 2018-19 and better use of the Complaints Management System (CMS).

We acknowledge there is a need to drive consistency in quality and performance across the system, and there should not be a trade-off between the two. Complaints handling across the system would benefit from a more joined up focus and to address this we have established a BICS Complaints Steering Group to share good practice and learning to drive improvement.

The small number of respondents to the various calls for evidence, particularly the limited number of MPs, is not a full representation of the cohort, but we agree with the ICIBI a new survey of MPs and more focus on customer insight in general will help us identify and act on systemic issues.

Since receipt of the report, the Windrush Lessons Learned Review (WLLR) has been published. The publication delay has allowed us time to ensure our response is aligned to the WWLR recommendations.

The Home Office accepts the ICIBI’s first, second and fourth recommendation and partially accepts the third.

The Home Office response to the recommendations:

The Home Office should:

1. Revisit each of the Recommendations from the 2015 inspection and produce an updated response to each, with an improvement plan for each BICS complaint handling team.

1.1. Accepted

1.2. The Home Office is satisfied that progress has been made in relation to most of the recommendations from the 2015 report. However, to ensure that all recommendations, including from this report, continue to be progressed with further improvements made across the system, the Department has established a BICS Complaints Steering Group, with representation from each complaint handling team and chaired by the single owner for complaints. Where gaps are identified by the Group, the relevant complaints handling team will be required to provide improvement plans which will be monitored until implementation.

2. Nominate an overall BICS “owner” for complaints, with the responsibility (and sufficient authority) to ensure that each complaint handling team is regularly achieving the Customer Service Standard and producing responses that meet the quality standards. They should also ensure that any high-risk and cross-BICS themes or issues are quickly identified and addressed.

2.1. Accepted

2.2. We agree that the appointment of a single owner for complaints will enable a more joined up approach to handling complaints across the BICS to ensure that Customer Service Standards are met consistently across all areas, and that quality remains high. A single owner has been identified and in addition:

• a BICS Complaints Steering Group will meet quarterly to improve performance, drive consistent quality standards and share good practice across the system.

• we will align processes through an IT platform, which will enable sharing of high-risk and cross-BICS themes quickly to all customer contact handlers. We aim to have this in place in 2020.

• we will ensure that complaints quality and performance in all BICS areas is regularly scrutinised by their respective Senior Management Teams as well as at relevant departmental Boards.

3. At least quarterly, publish (on GOV.UK and on Horizon) the “lessons learned” from the complaints received by BICS in that period, and the changes and improvements made as a result.

3.1. Partially Accepted

3.2. We agree strongly that we must learn and act on the lessons we derive from the complaints we receive and across BICS, we have put processes in place that allow trends to be flagged and awareness raised of ongoing patterns of concern. For instance, UK Visas and Immigration uses its 3C model (concern, cause and countermeasure) to collect feedback on specific trends being captured through complaint contacts. The BICS Complaints Steering Group will allow us to strengthen our approach to learning lessons further and to generate insights that can drive improvements across the system.

3.3. In keeping with the approach taken by other large operational departments, we will continue to publish complaints data. However, we consider that maintaining an effective and dynamic lessons learned process is reliant on a more open learning culture better suited to a more internal publication process. We believe implementing a formal reporting cycle on a quarterly basis will become an industry in itself and will detract from actually learning lessons. However, to ensure transparency we will publish this information annually (although the frequency could be increased subject to the findings of the Complaints Review due to commence in June).

4. Carry out a new survey of MPs to ensure that the structure and working practices of the MP Account Management (MPAM) team, in particular its capacity to engage effectively with MPs and their offices, is meeting the latter’s needs.

4.1. Accepted

4.2. We will conduct a new survey of MPs in 2020. The results of the survey will be used to improve and tailor the services on offer to MPs and their offices. Critically the data will be used in conjunction with the findings of the Complaints Review to drive our overall strategic response to both the ICIBI report and the WWLR.