Personal Independence Payment: Medical Examinations
(asked on 23rd November 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average length of time is that a person must wait to receive the outcome of their Personal Independence Payment assessment.
Data on average processing times from the assessment to a decision being made for all Personal Independence Payment (PIP) normal rules New Claims to July 2021 (the latest available data) is published in Table 2A of the PIP Statistics tables which can be found here:
The end to end average clearance times for new special rules claims are 3 working days (4 days for reassessments).
Processing times can vary reflecting factors including customer demand, operational resource and timescales for different parts of the process. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused distortion and work is ongoing to manage the recovery. This includes allowing a longer deadline for return of the PIP2 questionnaire for claims made between late February and late May 2021; these claims have now started to reach clearance.
We are always looking at ways to improve the assessment process. In addition to face-to-face, we will continue to conduct paper-based, telephone and video assessments where appropriate.
PIP analytical data held by the Department does not contain the date the assessment takes place. As a proxy, we use the date an assessment was returned from the Assessment Providers to the Department. This is usually a few days following the assessment.