Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will make a comparative estimate of the percentage of PTSD claims submitted under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme process that have been delayed for (a) more than one year, (b) more than two years, (c) more than three years, (d) more than four years, (e) more than five years, compared to other physical and mental health claims submitted under that scheme.

All Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) claims are subject to an Average Clearance Time (ACT) target of 90 days. However, there is no specified time in which AFCS claims must be cleared. This is important because the prognosis over an individual’s injury may not be certain within that 90 day period. To ensure we do the right thing, time may be required to understand the full extent of the injury and its effect so we can achieve the best possible outcome for the individual. As a consequence, it is not possible to determine the percentage of claims that have been delayed.

The data in this response instead presents, for all AFCS claims cleared between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2022, the number and proportion of (a) mental health awards in which PTSD was cited by the claimant, (b) mental health awards where PTSD was not cited by the claimant, and (c) all other awards by number of years between MOD receiving the claim and the claim outcome being determined is attached at (Table 1).

Please note that whilst it is possible to determine AFCS awards for mental disorders from the electronic information, it is not possible to reliably determine awards for PTSD specifically. Awards where PTSD has been cited by the claimant have been identified based on a free text search of the condition claimed for using the following terms: ‘PTSD’, ‘post traumatic stress’ and ‘post-traumatic stress’. The condition claimed for is based on information supplied by the claimant and does not necessarily reflect a diagnosis of PTSD. Therefore, awards made under the mental disorders table to those that claimed for PTSD may have been awarded for a different type of mental illness. Therefore, these figures should be treated with caution.