Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time taken was for his Department to respond to enquiries about Personal Independence Payments in the period between June 2023 and September 2023.

Enquiries relating to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) can come through various channels and relate to many different areas of work. An enquiry could be made for a range of reasons and could involve several contacts or multiple requests. For these reasons we are unable to provide an average response time.

For telephony enquiries we operate a service where most enquiries are handled at the point of contact in real time by our Case Workers on the PIP enquiry line. Some enquiries will be forwarded (transferred) to more experienced colleagues or specialists, and in a very small number of cases a call back may be needed.