Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what her Department's target timescale for processing applications for Alternative Payment Arrangements; and what percentage of claims are processed within this target.

There is no target timescale for processing applications for Alternative Payment Arrangements (APAs). APAs are available at any point during Universal Credit claims where there is risk of financial harm to a claimant and/or their family.

APAs can help claimants who need additional support with:

• paying housing costs of Universal Credit as a Managed Payment direct to the landlord;
• more frequent than monthly payments; or;
• split payment of an award between partners.

Universal Credit payment timeliness statistics are published in the Households on Universal Credit section on Stat-Xplore. These figures can be broken down by those with APAs and can be found at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/.

Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html