Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the time taken to assign to an investigator a complaint to the Independent Case Examiner.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The rate at which complaints can be allocated to an investigator is dependent on multiple factors including the volume and complexity of complaints received, as well as available investigative resource.

ICE is a demand led service and continues to receive high complaint intake volumes. It has experienced a 37% increase in referrals since April 2022, with an 18% increase in the 2023/24 operational year. Not all referrals into ICE are accepted for investigation. ICE has experienced an 83% increase in the volume of cases it has accepted since April 2020, with a 9% increase in the 2023/24 operational year.

The ICE office continues to review its process and operating model and continuously seeks opportunities to maximise productivity, ensuring it operates with optimum investigative resource. In the past 20 months (August 2022 – March 2024) resource levels at the ICE office have increased by 18%. The unit is operating at 99.11% of its agreed headcount.

The Office has reduced the volume of cases awaiting allocation to an investigator by 49% over the 2023/24 operational year. The combined number of cases being handled by the ICE Office at the end of March 2024 was 1462, this represents a 33% reduction from March 2023 despite the high intake levels experienced.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many zero-emission buses have been allocated funding under the Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas scheme 1 as of 15 April 2024; and how many and what proportion of those buses (a) have been ordered and (b) are on the road as of that date.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Government provided £270 million to Local Transport Authorities under the ZEBRA 1 programme. This funded 1,314 buses,1,053 have been ordered of which 313 are already on our roads across England.

More recently, the Government announced ZEBRA 2, with a further £142.8 million to Local Transport Authorities. This will help LTAs to purchase more zero emission buses, going further in our commitment to reduce carbon emissions in the transport sector whilst improving service quality for users.

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