Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in the most recent 12 months for which data is available, what the average length of time applicants for (a) personal independence payment, (b) employment and support allowance, and (c) the limited capability for work assessment of universal credit, waited for (i) an assessment and (ii) a correct decision on their assessment.

We are committed to ensuring that disabled people get the full support that they need in a timely manner. We always aim to make an award decision as quickly as possible, taking into account the need to review all available evidence, including that from the claimant. Decisions are made following consideration of all the information provided by the claimant, including supporting evidence from their GP or medical specialist.

(a) For Personal Independence Payment (PIP), between November 2020 and October 2021, the most recent 12 months for which data is available:

- The average (median) time between a PIP new claim being referred to the Assessment Provider (AP) and returned from the AP was 13 weeks.

- The average (median) time between a PIP new claim being returned from the AP and a DWP decision being made was 2 weeks.

The length of time between Referral to AP and return from AP is used as a proxy for the length of time the claimant has waited for an assessment, because data on the dates that assessments took place is not held by DWP. Similarly, the length of time between return from the AP and a DWP decision being made is used as a proxy for the length of time for a decision to be made on the assessment.

(b) The Department publishes Employment Support Allowance (ESA) Work Capability Assessment (WCA) statistics on gov.uk which can be found here. The median ESA WCA customer journey processing times for initial claims can be found in section 10 of the latest statistical bulletin. The statistics include the average time taken for the full end-to-end process and also the time from WCA referral to AP recommendation and the time from the AP recommendation to the DWP decision, including those following a Mandatory Reconsideration.

More details can also be found in Table 1 of the ‘Clearance Times for Initial Claims’ dataset in the ESA Work Capability Assessments section of Stat-Xplore. Guidance for users is available here.

(c) The information for Universal Credit WCA processing times is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

Notes

Source part (a): PIP ADS

• PIP data includes normal rules claimants only and is for new claims only.
• Figures have been rounded to the nearest whole number of weeks.

• The status of claims as 'normal rules' and 'new claim/reassessment' is shown as at the point of clearance of the stage of the journey concerned.
• Processing times do not include claims that were withdrawn by the claimant during this phase or claims that were returned to DWP without an assessment report and disallowed because the claimant failed to attend the assessment without good reason.
• Processing times are for initial decisions only, and do not include Mandatory Reconsiderations or Appeals.
• The figures quoted are the median processing time of claims which cleared the specified part of the journey between 1^st November 2020 and 31^st October 2021.
• The median time is the middle value if you were to order all the times within the distribution from lowest value to highest value. The median is presented here instead of the mean because the mean can be unduly affected by outlying cases (e.g. cases where the person has been hard to reach due to being in prison, hospital, failed to attend the assessment on numerous occasions etc.)
• Great Britain only.

• This is unpublished data. It should be used with caution and it may be subject to future revision.