Social Security Benefits: Appeals

(asked on 22nd March 2019) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information his Department holds on the number of people that have waited 12 months or more from the time they appealed a decision on (a) employment and support allowance and (b) personal independence payments to receiving an outcome; and what steps he is taking to reduce waiting times for appeal outcomes.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 27th March 2019

The data requested at a) and b) are not available centrally, and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

Information about volumes and waiting times generally for appeals to the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support), including Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP), is published at: www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.

To improve clearance times, additional fee-paid judicial office holders have been recruited: 250 judges across the First-tier Tribunal, 125 disability qualified members and up to 230 medical members. In addition, more PIP appeals are being listed per session and case-management “triage” sessions are being conducted, in order to reduce the time taken for appeals to reach final determination. These measures will increase the capacity of the Tribunal, with the aim of reducing waiting times for appellants.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is also developing a new digital system with a view to enabling speedier processing of appeals and a better service for all parties to the proceedings. Information on the new digital service can be found at www.gov.uk/appeal-benefit-decision.

Finally, HMCTS is working with the Department for Work and Pensions to understand what could be done to reduce the number of appeals being submitted to the Tribunal, through their focus on improving decision-making and the mandatory reconsideration process.

Latest figures (between April 2014 – September 2018) indicate that 3.9m ESA (post WCA) decisions have been made. Of these, 8% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned. For PIP, the latest figures (to December 2018) indicate that since it was introduced, 3.9 million decisions have been made. Of these 10% have been appealed and 5% have been overturned at Tribunals.

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