The Departmental Review System (DRS) has been developed to semi-automate department-initiated processes for compliance review exercises and individual examiner-initiated specific review, and to promote a consistent approach to review processing. Some of the main features of the system are:

• streamlined processes for selecting high risk assessments for review and initiating compliance review exercises
• form and letter generation appropriate to the review reason and review stage
• scanning of barcodes on the return of the form to the office, to automatically advance the CMS case stage
• online presentation of compliance exercise details and outcomes
• online historical record of reviews undertaken for each pension assessment and their outcomes
• detailed and high-level reporting on the outcomes of reviews
• improved monitoring and reporting for review processing

Further information about DRS is available on the following intranet page:

DRS User Guide

A compliance review is a risk-based, department-initiated review based on risk profiling. Risk profiling identifies assessments containing high-risk characteristics such as volatile income and asset items.  Examples of risk groups are pensioners who have not had their income and assets reviewed for a number of years or assessments with high-risk property that has not been revalued for many years.

A specific review is an event-based, department-initiated review, based on anticipated or known changes to a pensioner's personal or financial circumstances, likely to impact on the rate of pension.

Examples include:

• earnings review
• review of circumstances following notification of a changed address
• post-bereavement review

A member of income support processing staff actioning reviews through the departmental review system.