To expect a response from my MP within a month?

[MrsBennetsPoorNerves]

I wrote to my MP a month ago to express my concern about something. It wasn't a request for help with a personal issue but rather a concern regarding a national issue. AIBU to expect to receive something back from my elected representative within a month of writing to him?

To pre-empt any questions, I included my full address and postcode in the email, so he should be clear that I am a constituent. I used the correct email address. My email was polite and respectful, and I wrote it myself (i.e. not a cut & paste job).

I do appreciate that MPs get lots of correspondence, so I didn't expect an instant response, but they do have staff to help with this kind of stuff and I'd have thought that four and a half weeks should be ample really.

I don't dislike the guy. I voted for him in fact. But AIBU to think that this isn't good enough?

The one relevant question was what was this “question” about.

If you were asking what colour underpants he wears…. Then no you’re not going to get a response

if you asked what day you bins are collected, again - unlikely to get a response any time soon (check your council website!)

See what I mean? The question you asked will determine the speed with which he responds no doubt

I wrote to mine three times, phoned twice and no reply.

It was a personal.issue I needed help with and I got zero response whatsoever, ended up paying to get it sorted myself.

My MP is bloody useless. Spends all his time poncing about taking selfies rather than replying to constituents.

It was about a significant area of national policy. Definitely not trivial and definitely not "niche" - featured in the national news etc.

I don't want to say what the specific question was, because I don't want people's opinions on that to affect their answer. The issue itself is irrelevant - I was expressing concerns about a key area of policy, the details of which the MP himself would undoubtedly be familar with.

I just want to know whether I'm BU to expect a response within a month of writing. It is a genuine AIBU. Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic?

The vote is currently 50/50.

For those who think I'm BU, could anyone say what sort of timescales they think would be reasonable? Or do you think I'm unreasonable to expect a response at all?

Our MPs assistant responds to all emails and giving a time frame for a response. The last enquiry (about the very high rise in water bills) went way beyond the 4 weeks given as a response time because the water company didn't bother to reply to him. They kept us updated but to date they still haven't had a response - I was glad to see the boss of the water company is on the list of those not getting a bonus.

I got a response within a month - my MP isn't a government minister/under secretary. Has your MP any other responsibilities?

No, even my MP who I don't rate, at least has the good grace to send out his identikit letters in good time.

When I've contacted my MP in the past regarding personal issues I normally get a response within a week or two. If it's policy related sometimes this will take over a month.

Sadly, the other thing to consider is not all MPs take the time to respond to constituents. There is no job description for MPs and so they can essentially decide what they want to do. Perhaps you can find out if your MP has an office team/caseworkers and see if they have an email address?

No. New MP in this parliament in a marginal constituency that changed hands at the last election. I would have more patience if it was a government minister with their own portfolio.

My last MP (different party) was also crap at responding, and I was unimpressed.

The one before that was a cabinet minister but always managed to get back within a reasonable time frame. I didn't like her politics, but credit where credit is due... she was an excellent constituency MP.

I have worked for MPs and if it isn’t time critical then a month plus can be standard.

MPs offices are so very busy, we would get over 200 emails a day and could have cases of up to 1000 waiting a reply. MPs do have staff but the budgets aren’t huge so can they tend to have four staff and that is to cover all the work, not just constituents enquiries.

Sometimes the delays did not make the MP popular but there can be constituents in terrible situations which can take a lot of man hours to sort out and then we would get even further behind (think close family members from hostile countries with a dying child here in the UK needing a visa) and we had to prioritise these over anything policy. Also if it is a politically engaged area then every time there is something on the news it can generate 100s of similar emails in a day. Yes a lot of these were the same email or raised the same issues , so got the same reply, but it is still very time consuming to merge, print, sign, stuff etc.

Their website should give an idea in turnaround times, but there is no problem in chasing up if you haven’t had a reply.

Yes, I'm aware that they don't have to respond. It's a good suggestion about contacting one of the caseworkers but I probably won't bother. If he can't be arsed to respond, then he just won't get my vote next time.

If he / she is writing to government for policy advice, many government depts have a 20 working day response time. That’s if they are able to meet that target, at times of high correspondnece that could slip further. They might themselves not have enough resource to send an interim reply to you.

Thank you, this is a very helpful response.

I'm well aware of the time that MPs spend helping vulnerable constituents with real problems, and some of them do an outstanding job with this. I wouldn't expect them to prioritise emails about policy issues over and above people with urgent personal problems. But I am still struggling to see how one of his staff couldn't have drafted s short response in the space of 4 and a half weeks. Even if it was only a holding response to say sorry we haven't got back to you yet.

But thank you, you have given me some food for thought.

I wrote to mine and got a response after around a fortnight. I thought that was a long time!

Thank you, that's helpful.

I want to like this MP. I am not looking to find fault, was just feeling a bit let down. Perhaps I'll give him a bit longer before I give up on him.

MP offices will often seek views from the government department responsible for the policy area in question which can add a decent chunk of time.

If they are a new Labour MP, I suspect a lot of them still have relatively inexperienced staff.

And an MP doing their job properly does have an insane amount to do.

But an acknowledgement or holding response would be nice after such a wait.

Thank you, that's a very fair point about his staff being inexperienced. I had not considered that.

I know what you mean, IME if it was a personally written email then yes we would always try and make sure a holding response was sent, not with standard campaigns as there was just too many.

With casework most had a personal acknowledgment email within 48 hours and we never had complaints about delays with these issues mainly due to the fact we kept on top of communication the constituents. Complaints (not that we had loads) were always policy.

Also, some people are horrible if an email comes from a staff member, I have been called all sorts for it so again we only tended to do this if it was a personal issue and we knew the risk of abuse was highly unlikely.

The problem is, MPs get far too many enquiries which are not for them (but they do not like to redirect as then it gets repeated as “refused to help”) and not enough staff for the amount of correspondence they receive.

I worked for MPs for well over ten years and saw a huge increase in the amount of emails since the early 2010s to last year - it has become unrecognisable and this isn’t a bad thing, increased engagement with politicians is brilliant, but it does make for an larger workload for offices.

It depends . I was a civil servant and most MPs would send their constituents letters to the relevant Government Department for a response
I think most Government Departments had to respond within 4 weeks. That may seem a long time but when you realise Departments deal with thousands of letter a week and that it takes a while to allocate the letter to the currency policy leader to respond to and then that person has to draft a response, get it cleared then it has to be cleared by the Minister before being sent back.
So the MP would have to wait for the Government Department to respond before they could respond to their constituent.
Some MPs respond without contacting the relevant Government Department but it's unusual as the point of a letter to your MP is to log something with the Government and to get them to change something.

Most MPs, any party, don’t see political responses as anything important.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves as you’ve asked a question about national policy, your MPs office should have forwarded your letter to the relevant Departmental correspondence team who will either reply if it’s something simple/straightforward. If not it will be forward on to the relevant part of that Dept with responsibility for that policy.

The Departmental teams will have timescales to respond. But until they get the correspondence that clock doesn’t start ticking. If they can’t respond within the timescales you’ll get a holding response whilst they investigate further.

But this all hinges on your MPs office recognising your concerns and forwarding this on promptly. Here is the parliamentary guidance, it explains what to do when you’ve not had a reply

https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/#jump5

It does depend what it was about really and whether he can actually do anything to influence it.