Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 19
19
Accepted
HMPO stockpiled passport books and worked with Thales to procure additional storage for these.
Conclusion
HMPO stockpiled passport books and worked with Thales to procure additional storage for these. Thales’s performance decreased in March and April 2022, with the percentage of items printed within 48 hours dropping from 100% in January and February 2022, to 85% and then 56% respectively. HMPO told us that this dip in performance was due to the surge in applications in early 2022, and that Thales recovered quickly. HMPO accepted responsibility for the issues faced by Thales, as it had informed the supplier to expect to process around 200,000 passports a week, when the actual number was closer to 250,000.31
Government Response Summary
The Home Office states that HM Passport Office has worked closely with Teleperformance and Sopra Steria to ensure they meet the required service level throughout 2023 and that Sopra Steria has consistently met its key performance measures since June 2022, while Teleperformance has met the required service levels since August 2022. They also appointed Serco to handle approximately 25% of calls to the Passport Adviceline.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 4.2 The Home Office works to continually improve its ability to procure and manage third party suppliers, using lessons learned to further support the robust monitoring of compliance against contract requirements. 4.3 For the work of Teleperformance and Sopra Steria, HM Passport Office has worked closely with them to help ensure that they meet the required service level throughout 2023. 4.4 In the first quarter of 2022, the work of Sopra Steria was affected by a reduction in desk capacity due to social distancing. Additionally, there were some recruitment delays with the onboarding of agency staff. This has subsequently been resolved through joint-working to reduce the time taken to security clear these staff. 4.5 Sopra Steria has consistently met its key performance measures for back-office processing at HM Passport Office from June 2022 to date. 4.6 While Teleperformance did not meet the required standard until August 2022, HM Passport Office worked with them constructively to resolve this as quickly as possible. Following the introduction of a number of improvements, Teleperformance have met the required service levels for call answering since August 2022. 4.7 However, as part of lessons learned from last year, HM Passport Office has added greater resilience to its provision of customer contact services by appointing an additional supplier. Serco, who commenced this work on 22 March 2023, will handle approximately 25% of calls to the Passport Adviceline and provide extra resilience to Teleperformance, with the overall contact centre spend estimated to deliver around £2 million savings over a two-year period.