Client Satisfaction Survey 2023

Background and objectives

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of changes to parliamentarians’ work expenses on 13 January 2017, the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA) was established as an independent statutory authority. As outlined in its first Corporate Plan, IPEA’s core objective is to advise, audit and report on parliamentarians’ work expenses in a professional and independent manner, providing clear advice to parliamentarians and their staff, and clear oversight of expenses and allowances through auditing and reporting functions. Ultimately, the role of IPEA is to enable parliamentarians and their staff to undertake their work effectively, whilst ensuring tax-payer money is spent efficiently, effectively and ethically.

The 2023–2024 Portfolio Budget Statements outline clear performance criteria for IPEA. In order to ensure that these targets are met, and that parliamentarians and their staff’s expectations and needs are being met, IPEA has conducted an annual survey since 2018 to evaluate satisfaction with the services it is providing, how these are being received, and what, if any, areas of service provision should be a focus for improvement.

IPEA re-commissioned Kantar Public to conduct the 2023 client satisfaction survey to provide a robust measure of overall satisfaction with the information and services provided by IPEA to parliamentarians and their staff, and to track progress against previous years’ results.

More specifically the objectives of the 2023 survey were to:

• Understand the ease of accessing IPEA and identify the level of satisfaction with advice received.
• Establish how effective IPEA is perceived to be in administrating and processing travel expenses, allowances and related expenses.
• Determine the effectiveness of communication and information channels used.
• Evaluate the level of satisfaction with IPEA processes, reports and administrative services.
• Seek opinions on service delivery, performance, customer service and relationship management.
• Identify and prioritise service improvement opportunities.
• Highlight potential service issues to develop and implement appropriate response actions.
• Compare levels of satisfaction year on year and evaluate if satisfaction concerns identified in previous years have been addressed.

This research also included a series of qualitative interviews with parliamentarians and staff to further explore experiences and perceptions of IPEA. The following report outlines the findings from this research in response to the above objectives.