Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many funeral expenses payment claims were accepted at initial decision in (a) 2019-20 and (b) the first six months of 2020-21.

We do not publish the number of claims awarded, at initial decision, as requested. The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

However, a variant on the data requested is in the public domain. Applications that were initially unsuccessful may have resulted in an award after review, reconsideration or appeal. These cases are included in the final awards in the Social Fund Annual Report.

The number of Funeral Expenses Payment awards, in Great Britain, is reported annually in Appendix 1 of the Social Fund Annual Report:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/social-fund-annual-report-2017-to-2018

The number of awards for 2019/20 will be published in due course, and so cannot be released ahead of publication.