Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the average length of time taken for a complaint in relation to the equalisation of the state pension age to be (a) received and referred to be Independent Case Examiners Office (b) allocated to a case manager and (c) investigated by the case manager and a response issued to the complainant.

The Independent Case Examiner’s Office can only accept a complaint for examination once the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) complaint process has been exhausted. Final complaint responses from DWP signpost complainants to the ICE Office if they remain dissatisfied with the response to their complaint and tell them they have six months in which to do so.

In response to: (a) we do not collect information about the average time taken by complainants to escalate their complaint to the Independent Case Examiner’s Office, following receipt of DWPs final complaint response; (b) to date, the average time take to allocate complaints about the equalisation of state pension age to an investigation case manager is 44 week; and (c) following allocation to an investigation case manger the average time taken to conclude an investigation into this group of complaints is 9 weeks (against a target of 20 weeks).