Service standards
The Support Service works to the response times set out on this page. They apply to every request received through this site or by email, in every category, from the day the Service was established. They were fixed with two things in mind: that the people who write to the Service should know what to expect, and that the Service should be able to say, from its own register, whether it has done what it promised.
The standards measure the Service's own work. Where a request is referred, the standard is met when the referral is made and confirmed to you; the time the referred office takes is measured by that office. Where the Service has asked you for information, the clock is paused until you reply. The rules are set out in full below, together with what the standards do not cover, how the Service has performed against them so far, and how to complain when it has fallen short.
- 2
- Working days: acknowledgement of every request
- 5
- Working days: first substantive reply to an access or connectivity request
- 1
- Working day: referral of a request to another office
- 10
- Working days: reply to a complaint about the Service
Response times
| Stage | Category | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgement | All categories | 2 working days |
| First substantive reply | Access | 5 working days |
| First substantive reply | Connectivity | 5 working days |
| First substantive reply | Other, where answered by the Service | 10 working days |
| Referral to the responsible office | Standards, membership and other referred matters | 1 working day |
| Acknowledgement of a reopened request | All categories | 2 working days |
| Reply to a request for the status of a request | All categories | 2 working days |
| Reply to a complaint about the Service | All categories | 10 working days |
| Closure after a request for information goes unanswered | All categories | 20 working days |
The targets are maxima, not norms. Most access requests are answered on the day they are acknowledged, and most referrals are made on the day of receipt. The Service publishes the proportion of requests within target because it is the figure that matters to the person who is still waiting; from January 2027 it will also publish the median time to a reply.
How the times are measured
Every time on this page is measured from the register of the Service, using the dates it records for receipt, acknowledgement, requests for information, referral and reply. The questions below set out the rules. They are applied in the same way to every request, and no request is excluded from the published figures.
Commitments
Beyond the response times, the Service makes six commitments about how a request is handled. They are not measured in days, but a failure to keep any of them is a ground for complaint.
- Every request is logged
- A request received by the form or by email is entered in the register of the Service and given a reference number before anything else is done with it.
- You are told where your request has gone
- A request referred to another office is not passed on silently. The referral is confirmed to you with the name of the office and the reference number.
- Nothing is sent that you did not submit
- The Service passes on the request as you wrote it. It does not add, remove or interpret information on your behalf.
- Working days are counted from receipt
- Times are measured in working days of the Network from the day the request is received. A request received outside working hours is treated as received on the next working day.
- A closed request is reopened on request
- If the answer did not resolve the matter, quoting the reference number is enough. The Service does not ask you to justify the reopening, and the request keeps its number and its history.
- Performance is published, not merely measured
- The Service publishes its performance against every standard on this page each quarter, using the same register from which the standards are measured, and says where it has fallen short.
What the standards do not cover
The standards are deliberately narrow. They cover what the Service can itself control and account for, and nothing else. Four matters that are often taken to be covered are not.
- The time another office takes after referral
- The Support Service's standard is met when the referral is made and confirmed to you. Each department and office of the Network answers for its own response times. Where a referred office has not replied, the Service will ask it for a progress report on your behalf but cannot compel a reply.
- Security incidents
- Security incidents are handled by the Defence Department by the emergency channel published to member administrators. A security matter sent to the Support Service is forwarded at once and is not measured, since the Service is not the right place for it and does not wish to appear to be.
- Planned maintenance
- Maintenance announced in advance by the Status Service is not an outage. A connectivity request that concerns listed maintenance is closed with a reference to the notice, and the closure is measured as a substantive reply.
- The resolution of the underlying problem
- The standards measure how quickly the Service replies, not how quickly a fault is repaired or an account is created by an administrator. Those times depend on the shared services and on member organisations, and the Service publishes only what it can itself account for.
Performance against the standards
The Service has been established for one day, and so its first figures are for the four weeks before establishment, from 10 August to 5 September 2026, when requests were received under interim arrangements by the help desks of member organisations and by the Service's establishment team. Those requests were transferred to the register on 5 September and the times below were measured from it, applying the rules above as though the standards had been in force.
| Standard | Target | Requests measured | Within target | Proportion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgement | 2 working days | 2,146 | 2,069 | 96% |
| First substantive reply, Access | 5 working days | 968 | 889 | 92% |
| First substantive reply, Connectivity | 5 working days | 451 | 402 | 89% |
| First substantive reply, Other answered by the Service | 10 working days | 218 | 197 | 90% |
| Referral to the responsible office | 1 working day | 482 | 472 | 98% |
| Acknowledgement of a reopened request | 2 working days | 61 | 61 | 100% |
| Reply to a complaint about the Service | 10 working days | 9 | 8 | 89% |
Acknowledgement and referral were close to target throughout. First substantive replies were not: 79 access requests and 49 connectivity requests took longer than five working days, almost all of them in the second half of the period, when the volume of access requests from organisations without a working administrator was at its highest. The Service does not regard these figures as satisfactory and expects the access figure in particular to improve as that work passes to administrators; see Guidance for member administrators.
Nine complaints were received in the period, eight of them about the time taken to reply. Six were upheld. One complaint was answered outside the ten-day target. No request for review by the Head of Service was made. The volume of requests by category, and the number answered by the Service and referred, are set out under Contact Us.
Reporting
The Service reports on its performance quarterly, on this page and in the Newsroom. Each report uses the register as it stands on the last day of the quarter, and later reports do not revise earlier ones except to correct an error, which is noted.
6 September 2026
Standards and transition-period figures published
The Service publishes the standards it will work to and its performance against them for the four weeks before establishment, when requests were received under interim arrangements.
October 2026
First quarterly report
Performance from establishment on 6 September to 30 September 2026, by standard and by category, with the volume of requests received and the number open at the end of the period.
January 2027
Second quarterly report
Performance for the quarter ending 31 December 2026, and the first comparison between quarters. From this report the Service will also publish the median time to a substantive reply, not only the proportion within target.
September 2027
First annual review of the standards
A standard that has been met in at least 98 per cent of cases for four consecutive quarters may be tightened. No standard will be relaxed without consulting member administrators.
Complaints about the Service
A complaint is a request like any other, with its own reference number and its own standard, and it is handled by someone who had no part in the matter complained of. The steps below describe the procedure.
Step 1: Write to the Service, marked as a complaint
Use the request form under the category Other, or email, and say in the first line that the message is a complaint. Quote the reference number of the request the complaint concerns, if there is one.
Step 2: Say what went wrong and what you would like done
A complaint may concern the time taken, the content or tone of a reply, a referral you consider mistaken, or the handling of your information. The Service can apologise, correct a reply, expedite or re-refer a request, and change its procedure; it cannot direct another office.
Step 3: The complaint is acknowledged and assigned
It is acknowledged within two working days, with its own reference number, and assigned to an officer who had no part in the original request.
Step 4: You receive a reply within ten working days
The reply says what the officer found, whether the complaint is upheld in whole or in part, and what the Service has done or will do. If the matter cannot be settled in ten working days you are told why and given a date.
Step 5: Ask for a review if you are not satisfied
You may ask, within twenty working days of the reply, for the Head of Service to review it. The review is the final stage within the Service; its outcome and the number of reviews requested are reported in the quarterly figures.
Complaints may be sent to contact@support.gov.vin. For the procedure an ordinary request follows, see How we work; for what the register records about a request and how to follow one up, see Reference numbers and the register.