Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average processing time is for a support for mortgage interest claim; and what proportion of claims have been approved over the last two years.

In answer to your first question, we do not record processing times for Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) Loans. This is because the start date of the process is not consistently defined or easily identifiable. There is flexibility built into the timings of the process to meet the needs of the customer. As SMI is a loan, those offered the loan can choose to accept or decline at any time and payments can be backdated to the day someone first became eligible.

On your second question, all eligible benefit recipients are offered a loan when they become eligible for SMI and they can choose to accept or decline. We publish the number of households receiving SMI on a bi-annual basis here.