Recommendation 24

The DWP contact centre relied on telephone numbers in NHS patient records to call clinically vulnerable people who had not yet registered their needs. In some 375,000 cases out of the 800,000 people that the contact centre could not get hold of, or over 20% of the 1.8 million people the centre attempted to contact, it was because of missing or inaccurate phone numbers. While government knew that a proportion of telephone numbers in NHS records were missing or inaccurate, the Programme agreed to use telephone numbers from NHS records to follow-up hard-copy letters.57 51 Qq 60–64 52 C&AG’s Report, paras 2.10, 3.2 53 Q 65; C&AG’s Report, paras 17, 3.4–3.5 54 Qq 64–65 55 Q 68; C&AG’s Report, para 17 56 Qq 66–69 57 C&AG’s report, para 2.8, 3.6, 3.24 Covid 19: supporting the vulnerable during lockdown 15