4. Mrs A complains that ICE refused to consider her complaint about DWP. She says that she did not receive DWP’s final response until 17 months after it was issued and that ICE still considered her complaint to be out of time.
5. She says this has blocked her from being able to access the complaints process and has left her very serious concerns unaddressed.
6. She would like ICE to address her concerns.
7. Mrs A initiated the DWP complaints process in October 2023. DWP issued its final response on 28 November. It addressed her concerns and signposted her to ICE outlining the need to approach them within six months. The deadline for doing this would have been 28 May 2024.
8. Mrs A approached ICE in April 2024 and said she had not received a final response from DWP. Mrs A said she had not heard anything regarding her complaint.
9. ICE responded the same day explaining that, as she had not provided a complaint response, it could not take further action.
10. On 24 April, Mrs A wrote to DWP reiterating her October 2023 complaint and seeking a response. From the evidence we have seen, this was not addressed or responded to by DWP at any stage.
11. Mrs A contacted her MP in March 2025. Her MP contacted DWP about the complaint and it provided her with the original final response on 4 April. This is 17 months after it says it was initially issued.
12. After receipt of this final response, Mrs A contacted ICE to escalate her concerns but on in April ICE refused to accept it. ICE explained that she had not provided the response letter within the six-month time limit.
13. Mrs A objected to this on grounds of fairness. She explained that she genuinely did not receive DWP’s final response and has been making efforts to try and get access to it before she could contact ICE.
14. ICE considered Mrs A’s explanations but chose not to put the time limit aside. It concluded that, ultimately, the letter was sent to the correct address and DWP recorded it as being sent. ICE found no evidence to suggest it had not been sent so it could not accept her late submission.
15. Following this, Mrs A asked her MP to refer her complaint about ICE’s decision to us for further consideration.
18. Mrs A is unhappy that ICE refused to address her complaint and has instead considered her out of time.
19. Our Standards set out how we expect organisations to act. They state that organisations should give open and honest answers as quickly as possible. Our Standards also state that we expect organisations to take all comments into account when making a decision.
20. ICE has its own time limits for when a case should be brought to it. Once the complainant is signposted to ICE, they need to approach ICE within six months of that date. DWP final response letters outline this and the information is also readily available on ICE’s website. If ICE considers a complaint to be out of time, there is no right of appeal against that decision.
21. We asked Mrs A for the reasons why she did not approach ICE with her complaints within the six-month timeframe. She explained that she did not receive DWP’s November 2023 final response until April 2025 following her MP’s intervention. This was 17 months later and meant that she had missed the ICE deadline by 11 months. These were the same reasons Mrs A had provided to ICE as mitigating factors for why she could not approach them sooner.
22. As a result, she could not escalate her complaint appropriately in that time. She has outlined that she had regularly contacted DWP to try and get the response but was ignored until her MP became involved in March 2025.
23. Mrs A also outlined that, given her experience at the time with the tribunal process, she believed that it seemed appropriate to allow time for a response before escalating her concerns further.
24. DWP considered these points but ultimately maintained its decision. It concluded that, according to DWP’s system, the letter had been sent and to the correct address. It considered the reasons she had provided for why she could not have brought her concerns any sooner than she did but did not believe there was enough to put aside their time limit. Therefore, it could see nothing to suggest that the letter had not been sent and concluded her complaint as out of time by 11 months.
25. We contacted DWP and ICE for the relevant records it held as well as Mrs A directly to clarify what action was taken between November 2023 and March 2025 to try and gather the final response.
26. Both organisations and Mrs A provided the same information. Mrs A contacted ICE wrote DWP a letter in April 2024 and finally contacted her MP in March 2025. ICE responded to the April 2024 letter and advised it could not act as she had not provided the final response from DWP. The DWP contact that same month went unaddressed, and it was the inclusion of her MP that resulted in DWP sharing the final response. We can see Mrs A took action to try and get the complaint response three times during what is a 17-month window. One time each for ICE, DWP, and her MP.
27. What those responses did not include was any contact that occurred outside of these periods of time. We raised this with Mrs A as she had suggested during our correspondence there were emails and other letters she had sent that had gone unanswered. Unfortunately, she has not been able to provide any correspondence that she says was sent other than what we already know of. Equally, neither DWP nor ICE hold any written contact from her on file outside of what we have already set out in this letter and Mrs A has confirmed she has no further way of proving she sent additional contact. While we accept Mrs A’s view that she sent other forms of contact, there is no other evidence to support this. We appreciate this is frustrating for Mrs A.
28. We have to make a decision based off of the evidence we have available. ICE outlined in its response that there was nothing to suggest the letter was not issued as it should have been – it was sent to the same address used by Mrs A in her future correspondence and nothing flagged to say delivery had failed.
29. The two reasons Mrs A has provided for the delay appear to be contradictory. She has explained that she believes she has regularly chased up the response without getting a reply to it. However, she also states that given her tribunal had taken two years to resolve she believed the complaints process may take a similar length of time which she wished to allow it.
30. The information we have seen would suggest the latter is more applicable. We have only been able to locate three instances of contact between November 2023 and March 2025 - one each from both the DWP and ICE systems as well as from Mrs A directly. We do not believe we can consider this to be regular contact when it is essentially one email to each organisation over a 17 month period. This included an eleven month period where there appears, from the evidence we have been able to gather, to have been no contact between her DWP and ICE emails of April 2024 and her contacting her MP in March 2025.
31. Based on what we have seen, we consider ICE has acted in line with our Standards. It provided Mrs A with an open and honest answer as to why it would not accept her complaint for investigation. In doing so, we can see that it has considered all her reasons for the delay in approaching them before making that decision.
32. This has clearly been an incredibly difficult experience for Mrs A and that ICE’s decision and, subsequently, ours may only serve to compound it. We are sorry to hear of the difficulties she has experienced and her unhappiness with DWP’s actions leading to her complaint.
1. We have carefully considered Mrs A’s complaint. We have, for the reasons we go on to detail, decided to take no further action.
2. From the evidence we have seen, we believe ICE’s decision not to address her concerns was correct. DWP’s records suggest that its November 2023 decision letter was issued at the time and to the correct address. Mrs A approached ICE with the response 11 months after the deadline to do so had passed and, having considered her reasons, ICE did not believe there was enough to put the time limit aside.
3. We understand this has been a difficult and frustrating experience for Mrs A. We know she believes ICE’s decision has left her locked out of the complaints process through no fault of her own and this has left her unable to get the justice she is seeking. Our decision is in no way meant to detract from how significant these matters are to her.