Social Security Scotland call waiting times: FOI release

Information requested

Request for information 1: The number of calls whereby the claimant had to wait for more than 30 minutes to be connected.

Please provide data from 1 January 2024 to 23 June 2025. Please provide this information in a table with a breakdown by call wait time, the number of calls and percentage of calls.

Request for information 2: The longest claimant call wait time recorded from 1 January 2024 to 23 June 2025.

Response

Request for information 1: To provide the information for the period requested we have separated this into 2 periods: January 2024 to March 2024, and April 2024 to March 2025.

Revised metrics were introduced for reporting on the 2024-2025 year, therefore the basis of the reporting for the latest year differs from management information covering January 2024 to March 2024.

Number of calls where the claimant waited more than 30 minutes to be connected 

a) January – March 2024 (based on previous reporting method)

Wait time band	Number of calls	Percentage of calls
Under 30 minutes	181,049	91.9%
Over 30 minutes	15,882	8.1%
Total	196,932	100%

b) April 2024 – June 2025 (based on revised reporting method)

Wait time band	Number of calls	Percentage of calls
Under 30 minutes	808,577	87.8%
Over 30 minutes	112,355	12.2%
Total	920,932	100%

You may find it useful to know that Social Security Scotland do publish information relating to telephony performance bi-annually which can be found on our website. At present only information up to March 2025 is available online and this can be found here:

https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/reporting/publications/telephony-and-webchat-management-information-to-march-2025

Request for information 2: Our records indicate the longest call wait time recorded in the period 1 Jan 2024 to 23 June 2025 is 1 hour, 59 minutes, 40 seconds (March 2025)

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