Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 23 February 2018 to Question 128081, for what reason complaints from women born in the 1950s who are affected by changes in state pension age have not yet been allocated to an investigation case manager; what steps his Department is taking to ensure that those complaints are (a) allocated to an investigation case manager and (b) resolved in a timely manner; and how long the Department estimates it will take to (i) allocate, (ii) investigate and (iii) resolve those complaints.

The Independent Case Examiner’s Office allocates complaints from women born in the 1950s affected by changes to State Pension age, to a dedicated team of investigation case managers, based on the date the complaint was accepted for examination. In the case of this group of complaints, investigations have to date been concluded within an average of 9.75 weeks of the investigation commencing, against a target of 20 weeks. We cannot provide reliable estimates of how long it will take to allocate and conclude investigations into those cases that are currently awaiting investigation.