Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an estimate of the current waiting times for people applying for Personal Independence Payments in West Berkshire; and whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of current wait times on people waiting to receive payments.

We are committed to ensuring people can access financial support through Personal Independence Payment (PIP) in a timely manner, taking into account the need to review all available evidence. Reducing customer journey times for PIP claimants is a priority for the department and we are working constantly to make improvements to our service, including using a blend of phone, video and face-to-face assessments, increasing case manager and assessment provider health professional resource, and prioritising new claims, whilst safeguarding the continuity of existing awards to ensure they do not go out of payment.

Average waiting times for PIP new claims made under normal rules (i.e. excluding those processed under special rules for end of life) are calculated as the median number of weeks from registration to DWP decision, and published as the “Average Actual Clearance Time”. For claims cleared in July 2022, the latest data shows that the Average Actual Clearance Time for West Berkshire was 17 weeks.

Notes:

Source: PIP Atomic Data Store (ADS)

• Data for the West Berkshire Local Authority is unpublished. It should be used with caution as there is likely to be more variability in clearance times at small geographical levels. It may be subject to future revision.
• The status of claims as 'normal rules' and 'new claim' is shown as at the point of the DWP decision, in accordance with the measure. It is possible for claims to transition between normal and special rules, and between new claims and reassessments, during the course of the claimant journey.
• Clearance time measures do not include claims that were withdrawn by the claimant or claims that were disallowed by DWP prior to referral to the Assessment Providers (e.g. for failure to meet basic eligibility criteria).
• The median time is the middle value if you were to order all the times within the distribution from lowest value to highest value. The median is presented here instead of the mean because the mean can be unduly affected by outlying cases (e.g. cases where the person has been hard to reach due to being in prison, hospital, failed to attend the assessment on numerous occasions etc.).