Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time taken has been for a decision to be made on a (a) personal independence payment (PIP) and (b) mandatory reconsideration for PIP from the date his Department receives the relevant documentation from the claimant in each year from the introduction of that process.

Average clearance times for Personal Independence Payments are published online on a quarterly basis. The latest version can be found at

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-april-2013-to-july-2016.

Table 5A of “Personal Independence Payment: Official Statistics to July 2016” gives clearance times for Normal Rules claims broken down by month and by the stage of the claims process.

The average time taken for a Mandatory Reconsideration is not available and can only be obtained at disproportionate cost.