Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average decision wait time was for new Personal Independence Payment applications over the last year; and how many applications were awaiting a decision on 25 April 2023.

The average decision wait times for new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) applications can be found in the latest published release: “Personal Independence Payment statistics to January 2023”. Particularly, table 1A shows PIP average actual clearance times (median number of weeks) for normal rules, new claims in England and Wales.

Notes:

• Clearance time measures do not include claims that were withdrawn by the claimant or claims that were disallowed by the DWP prior to referral to the assessment providers (e.g. for failure to meet basic eligibility criteria).

The number of PIP applicants awaiting a decision has been interpreted as those who had registered a claim, but which had not been cleared. This includes some who may eventually be disallowed pre-assessment, those awaiting an assessment, and those awaiting a decision following an assessment. On 31 January 2023 this stood at 207,000 claims.

Source: PIP Atomic Data Store (ADS).

Notes:

• Data excludes Scotland, in line with the latest published figures on PIP;
• Figure is for new claims normal rules only; and
• Figure is rounded to the nearest 1,000.