Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the current wait time is between submitting an application for Personal Independent Payment and receiving a decision.

We are committed to ensuring that people can access financial support through Personal Independence Payment (PIP) in a timely manner, and reducing customer journey times for PIP claimants is a priority for the department. We always aim to make an award decision as quickly as possible, taking into account the need to review all available evidence.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) clearance times are available as part of the PIP Official Statistics quarterly release. The latest release, with data available to October 2022, is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1123400/tables-pip-statistics-to-oct-2022-eng-wales.xlsx.

Table 1A in this release shows that the median average clearance times for normal rules new claims are currently (October 2022) 16 weeks “end to end” (from registration to a decision being made).

Notes:

• The status of claims as 'normal rules' and 'new claim' is shown as at the point of the claim registration. It is possible for claims to transition between normal and special rules, and between new claims and reassessments, during the course of the claimant journey;
• The figures in Table 1A are the average clearance time of claims completing the relevant stage of customer journey within that calendar month;
• The 'Registration to DWP decision (end to end)' clearance time is measured as the average time between the date of registration of the claim and the date of the DWP decision to either award or disallow the claim. It does not include claims that were withdrawn by the claimant or claims that were disallowed by DWP pre-referral to the Assessment Providers (e.g., for failure to meet basic eligibility criteria or failure to return the Part 2 form within the time limit);
• The median time is the middle value if you were to order all the times within the distribution from lowest value to highest value. The median is presented here instead of the mean because the mean can be unduly affected by outlying cases (e.g., cases where the person has been hard to reach due to being in prison, hospital, failed to attend the assessment on numerous occasions etc.);
• Data provided is for claimants residing in England and Wales, plus those with unknown or abroad addresses only.