Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average length of time was for the Tribunals Service to administer a First-tier Tribunal-Social Security and Child Support appeal for (a) personal independence payment, (b) employment and support allowance, (c) income support, (d) jobseeker's allowance and (e) tax credits, (f) universal credit in (i) Coventry, (ii) the West Midlands and (iii) England in the most recent period for which figures are available.

Information about clearance times for appeals in the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) (SSCS) is published at:

www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.

SSCS appeals are listed into the hearing venue nearest to the appellant’s home address. The published data (which can be viewed at the link above) provide information about the timeliness of (a) Personal Independence Payment (PIP), (b) Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and (f) Universal Credit (UC) appeals for hearing venues covering (i) Coventry, (ii) the West Midlands and (iii) England for the period January – March 2020, the latest period for which data are available.

The table below contains the requested information for (c) Income Support (IS), (d) Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and (e) Tax Credits:

^1. Includes Working Family Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit.

^2. SSCS data are recorded by the office that dealt with the case, and if the case went to oral hearing, the location of the tribunal hearing, normally the hearing venue nearest to the appellant’s home address. Cases relating to the West Midlands region are attributed to the following SSCS venues: Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Coventry, Nuneaton, Stoke, Shrewsbury, Hereford and Worcester.

^3. Excludes SSCS Scotland and Wales Regions.

0 Equals zero appeals were heard during the period in question.

~ Equates to fewer than five appeals heard during the period in question.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and are the best data available.

The data may differ slightly to that of the published statistics as these data were run on a different date.

Waiting times are calculated from receipt of an appeal to its final disposal. An appeal is not necessarily disposed of at its first hearing. The final disposal decision on the appeal may be reached after an earlier hearing had been adjourned (which may be directed by the judge for a variety of reasons, such as to seek further evidence), or after an earlier hearing date had been postponed (again, for a variety of reasons, often at the request of the appellant). An appeal may also have been decided at an earlier date by the First-tier Tribunal, only for the case to have gone on to the Upper Tribunal, to be returned once again to the First-tier, for its final disposal.