Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time taken to reach a determination on a complaint escalated to the Independent Case Examiner was in 2017-18.

The Independent Case Examiner’s Office provides a demand led service. Once a complaint has been accepted for examination it awaits allocation to an investigation case manager. The time complaints wait to be brought into investigation depends on the volume of referrals received, the complexity of the cases on hand and the available investigative resource. During the 2017/18 reporting year the average time taken to reach a determination on a complaint escalated to the Independent Case Examiner (from the point the complaint was accepted for examination to case closure) was 60.87 weeks, whilst the average time taken to conclude an investigation from the point it was allocated to an investigation case manager to case closure was 19 weeks (against a target of 20 weeks).