Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what information they hold centrally on Personal Independent Payment appeal waiting times.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service records, and publishes, information about clearance times for appeals to the Tribunal. Clearance times are calculated from receipt of the appeal to the final disposal decision. The final outcome of any appeal is not necessarily achieved at its first hearing (i.e. waiting time for a Tribunal). The final disposal decision 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.

Social Security and Child Support (SSCS) appeals are listed into the hearing venue nearest to the appellant’s home address and statistics are collated according to the venue where the case is heard. Clearance times for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) appeals by SSCS venue are held centrally, as are overall waiting times. For the period June to September 2019, the latest period for which data are available, the average overall clearance time for a PIP appeal was 30 weeks.