Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time for an employment support allowance appeal hearing was in (a) Barnsley and (b) nationally in (i) each of the last 12 months and (ii) the last 12 months overall in the most recent period for which data is available.

The information requested is set out in the table below:

¹ Social Security and Child Support data are attributed to hearing venue nearest to the appellant’s home address, Barnsley data includes all cases attributed to the Barnsley Venue.

² Average Waiting Time is interpreted as the Average Clearance Time - the time taken for appeal receipt to outcome. Includes appeals

disposed of and is inclusive of both those cleared at hearing and those cleared without the need of a tribunal hearing.

³ Includes Employment and Support Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Reassessments).

⁴ Personal Independence Payment (New Claim Appeals) replaced Disability Living Allowance on 8 April 2013, and also includes Personal Independence Payment Clams (Reassessments).

⁵ Provisional data subject to change.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and are the best data available.

The data may differ slightly to that of the published statistics as these data were run on a different date.

Clearance times are dependent on several factors, such as hearing capacity at the venue closest to the appellant, or the local availability of Tribunal panel members. Other factors might include the availability of the appellant or their representative, or the provision of further evidence.

Latest figures indicate that since PIP was introduced, more than 3.1 million decisions have been made, and of these under 9% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned. For ESA the figure is only 8% of decisions made were appealed and 4% have been overturned at tribunals.