Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average wait for a pension credit application to be approved was in each year since 2015.

The Department does not hold information on the annual average waiting time for Pension Credit and cannot provide the figures requested.

The Department does publish our annual performance against a 50 working day clearance rate for Pension Credit in the DWP Annual Report and Accounts DWP annual report and accounts 2023 to 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Of 248,000 Pension Credit claims cleared in performance year 2023/24, 192,000 were cleared within the planned 50-day timescale, equating to 77.7%. 56,000, 22.3% were cleared outside of the of the 10-week planned timescale.