Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many claims for Pension Credit have taken longer than 6 weeks to process in the last 12 months.

The Department does not routinely capture data aligned to a 6-week clearance rate. However, we do capture data against a 50-day clearance rate, and our performance is published in the DWP Annual Report and Accounts DWP annual report and accounts 2023 to 2024 - GOV.UK(www.gov.uk).

Of 248,000 Pension Credit claims cleared in performance year 2023/24, 192,000 were cleared within the planned 50-day timescale, equating to 77.7%. 56,000, 22.3% were cleared outside of the of the 10-week planned timescale.