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Thanks very much.

Good morning. I want to ask about getting supporting information from third parties. David Wallace mentioned schools, and you clearly have to get information from health boards, local authorities, general practitioners and, maybe, third sector organisations. The Scottish Commission on Social Security said:

“Eliciting timely and detailed supporting information from busy professionals, which is focused on daily living and mobility activities, will be challenging.”

What steps are you trying to take to smooth that process and reduce processing times by getting information in a more timely manner from those third-party organisations?

We have touched on processing times. Once you get that supporting information, and it is complete, what is the delay between having the information and making a decision on an individual’s case? How long is that period, on average?

Yes.

I mean in processing cases.

That is an issue for the individual who cannot get a decision because there is a duplicate profile. An IT fix needs to be done to merge the two profiles so that a decision maker can make a decision. They cannot make a decision until the two profiles are merged. The information that we had on a particular case—it is now resolved, thankfully, but it took five months—was that there was an IT issue.

Okay.

Royal Mail collects from most post boxes at about tea time—five or six o’clock—so, if somebody posted a letter on a Friday night in response to something that they received when they got home from work that day, Royal Mail would not pick up that letter until tea time on the Monday. The letter would lie in a box for 72 hours. Will that not just further undermine people’s belief in the postal service? That person would have to wait 72 hours for their letter to be collected and then up to two or three days for it to be delivered to the recipient.

Good morning. What impact would moving to five-day working, which was mentioned earlier, have on collections?

Why change that?