Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times for responses to people with PIP enquiries in Hitchin constituency.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) services are delivered on a national basis, with performance managed across the whole service rather than by constituency. As such, we are unable to provide waiting time data specific to Hitchin.

We are improving service responsiveness through targeted recruitment across Disability Services. The recent onboarding of over 200 additional caseworkers is increasing capacity to support both decision‑making and telephony demand. This is reducing backlogs and contributing to improved average call waiting times, ensuring customers receive quicker decisions and more timely access to support.

We have also made sustained progress in reducing customer journey times, with average end‑to‑end clearance times falling from 26 weeks in August 2021 to 17 weeks as of June 2026.

In addition, we have deployed further resource to complaints and correspondence handling, prioritised the clearance of outstanding volumes, and strengthened performance management to improve timeliness. The Department’s service standard is to respond to complaints requiring formal investigation within 15 working days. While higher volumes and increasingly complex cases have affected response times in recent months, action is underway to address these pressures and drive further improvements in timeliness and efficiency.