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 the time it takes for Personal Independence (a) claims and (b) re-applications to be processed by her Department.

Managing customer journey times for PIP claimants is a priority for the department and we are working constantly to improve our service.

Our aim is to make an award decision as quickly as possible, taking into account the need to review all the available evidence including that from the claimant.

However, we have been seeing continuing high levels of new claims which has impacted our capacity to carry out award reviews as quickly as we would like.

In order to deal with this demand, we have been prioritising new claims, to ensure new claimants are paid as soon as possible whilst safeguarding claimants awaiting award reviews, who have returned their information as required, to ensure their payments continue until their review can be completed.