Social Security Benefits: Applications

(asked on 17th July 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many applications for (a) employment and support allowance payments and (b) personal independence payments were assessed from application to decision from April 2015 to March 2017; and what the average length of time was for such assessment of each of those payments.


Answered by
Penny Mordaunt Portrait
Penny Mordaunt
Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
This question was answered on 20th July 2017

Employment and Support Allowance (ESA):

The available information on the number of applications made to ESA can be found in the ESA Outcomes of Work Capability Assessments quarterly statistics published here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/employment-and-support-allowance-outcomes-of-work-capability-assessment

These statistics cover ESA applications made up to September 2016 and are the latest figures available.

Information on the average length of time taken for the ESA assessment process is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP):

The latest available data on PIP registrations and clearances split by type of clearance (i.e. whether the claim was awarded, disallowed or withdrawn) for both new claims and Disability Living Allowance (DLA) reassessed claims for each month since PIP was introduced in April 2013, can be found at https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/.

Guidance on how to use Stat-Xplore can be found here: https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/index.html.

The Department publishes a range of Official Statistics on PIP here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-april-2013-to-april-2017

These include average clearance times by new claims and DLA re-assessment claims and normal rules and special rules for terminally ill people. Specifically, tables 5A and 5B in the file “Data tables: PIP: Official Statistics to April 2017” show the Average Actual Clearance Times (Median number of weeks) for each stage of the PIP claimant journey.

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