Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average waiting time is for an assessment for Personal Independence Payment.

Information on the average time a claim spends with the assessment provider is publicly available in the Department’s Personal Independence Payment statistics release (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-statistics-to-january-2026).

In the ‘Personal Independence Payment: Clearance/Outstanding Times and Customer Journey Statistics to January 2026, England and Wales (XLS)’ file, tables 1A and 1B contain the PIP average actual clearance times for new claims and DLA reassessments respectively. Column ‘(iii) Referral to AP to return from AP’ is measured as the average time between the date of referral to the assessment provider and the date of the return of the assessment provider’s recommendation to the Department. It is reasonable to assume that only a small part of this time is related to the period between the assessment and the return of the recommendation.

The figures do not include claims that were withdrawn by the claimant during this phase or claims that were returned to DWP without a report and disallowed because the claimant failed to attend the assessment without good reason.