Independent Case Examiner
This page contains information about the Independent Case Examiner (ICE), including:
What it does
What complaints are eligible?
Cost
Timescale
Procedure
Outcomes
What it does
The Independent Case Examiner (ICE) can investigate complaints about services provided by a number of government departments and agencies, including:
- Jobcentre Plus
- Child Support Agency
- Debt Management
- Pension, Disability and Carers Service
- Financial Assistance Scheme
- Child Maintenance and Enforcement Division (Northern Ireland)
- Northern Ireland Social Security Agency
Many of these are services provided by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The ICE can also investigate complaints about the Child Support Agency (CSA), which used to be part of the DWP but in 2008 was transferred to a new agency, the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.
The ICE is funded by the DWP, but it operates independently.
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What complaints are eligible?
The ICE can consider complaints about the way a case was handled. These are likely to be about:
- Failure to follow proper procedures
- Excessive delays
- Poor customer service
The ICE cannot look at complaints about legislation or policy, or specific complaints about decisions made by the agency, such as the level of a benefit or child maintenance. If you believe a decision about a benefit is wrong, you must first approach that agency making the decision. If you believe the level of child maintenance has been calculated wrongly, you must first approach the CSA. There is then an independent appeals service.
Before you bring a complaint to the ICE, you must give the agency you are complaining about a chance to resolve the problem first. You can only take the complaint to the ICE if you are not happy with their final response. The ICE has discretion to take on a complaint if there has been unreasonable delay by the agency in dealing with your complaint. There used to be an 8 week cut-off, but this is no longer the case.
During 2008-09, 4251 complaints were brought to the ICE, but only 1453 were accepted; usually complaints are not accepted because the person complaining had not complained to the agency first.
There is a time limit as well - your complaint must be brought to the ICE within six months of the agency’s final response.
There has been an increase in the number of cases referred to ICE by third party profit-making organisations, who take their fees from the compensation payments made to complainants. You should note that it is easy to take a complaint to ICE directly, and there is no need to use complaint managers of any kind.
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Cost
The scheme is free to complainants.
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Timescale
The time needed to resolve a complaint varies from case to case, depending on how complicated it is, and whether it can be resolved through informal resolution. If an investigation is needed, you will be kept informed about how long it is likely to take. The ICE aims to close cases within 30 weeks; during 2008-09 the average time taken was 27.94 weeks.
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Procedure
The easiest way to make your complaint is through the e-form on the Independent Case Examiner website. You can also phone the ICE office for advice, and a member of staff will help you make the complaint.
There are a number of stages to dealing with a complaint:
- The ICE will acknowledge all complaints within two working days
- The ICE will decide within ten working days whether or not the complaint can be accepted
- A resolution officer from ICE will try to negotiate between the agency and the person complaining, to see if the problem can be resolved informally. In complaints about the CSA, around 85% of the complaints accepted were resolved in this way during 2008-09. In those about DWP services such as JobCentre Plus, around 45% of accepted complaints are resolved informally
- If an informal resolution is not achieved, a full investigation will be carried out by an investigation officer. Mediation may be suggested again at this stage, and if it is not successful, the ICE will issue a report and make a formal recommendation about how to resolve the problem
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Outcomes
Among the remedies the ICE can recommend are:
- action to put matters right
- an apology
- an explanation
- compensation
- a review of agency procedures
During 2008-09:
- 1111 complaints about the CSA and 342 complaints about the DWP were accepted by the ICE
- Of these, 1082 were resolved with help from a resolution officer
- 464 were investigated
The rate at which complaints are upheld varies between the services. During 2008-09, 33% of complaints about the DWP investigated were fully or partially upheld. In the same period 70% of complaints about the CSA were full or partially upheld.
Agencies are committed to doing what the ICE recommends. However, the ICE cannot enforce this. If the agency has not done what it should within 6 weeks, the ICE will ‘exit’ the case, and you can then complain to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. This is also the place to go if you want to complain about the ICE itself.
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December 2009
