Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average processing time was for applications to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme by people resident in Warrington in each of the last five years.

The table below shows the average time for decisions to be made on applications* for criminal injuries compensation by people resident in Warrington**.

*The table does not include archived bereavement applications because the address of the applicant is not retained. In most cases, applications are archived three years after the case has been closed.

**The above table includes all awards where the applicant named Warrington as the town in their home address in their application.

Over the last three years, we have seen continued growth in people coming forward to claim compensation. To help meet this rising demand and to boost our capacity to assess claims, we continue to uplift staff numbers in line with funding. We are working to identify efficiencies in the way we work led by an in-house continuous improvement team.

We have sponsored work to explore and implement helpful case management system changes and the potential for Artificial Intelligence applications to deliver further efficiencies by assisting our claims officers as they identify key information relevant to the assessment process.