Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to reduce waiting times for recipients of Personal Independence Payment to speak to an advisor over the telephone.

Prior to January 2025, wait times on the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) enquiry lines were stable and consistent.

• During November the average wait time for customers making an enquiry about their new claim was less than 7 minutes, and for customers making a general enquiry, wait times were consistently below 22 minutes.
• During December the average wait time for customers making an enquiry about their new claim was less than 4 minutes, and for customers making a general enquiry, again consistently below 22 minutes.

We have seen some disruption impacting the PIP telephony service during January 2025, due to technical issues, and whilst customers calling the new claims enquiry line will have seen calls continue to be answered in an average time of 5 minutes, call wait times on the general PIP enquiry line increased to just over 36 minutes.

To address the issue, which has also resulted in a high volume of repeat calls, additional resource has been deployed to the PIP general enquiry line, and we are now starting to see some recovery. Wait times last week had reduced to an average of 28 minutes, and we expect this to improve further over the next couple of weeks.