Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the average waiting time for decisions to award personal independence payments (PIP) to people whose fixed term PIP awards ended after the 2 October 2020.

Table 1 below shows the median clearance time in working days from registration to initial clearance (end to end clearance time) of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) advanced claim awards made up to 31^st October 2020 (the latest data available), following a fixed term award with no review that was due to end after 2^nd October 2020. This is broken down by whether the advanced claim was awarded under Normal Rules or Special Rules for the Terminally Ill. This data excludes advanced Claims that were outstanding as of 31^st October 2020.

Table 1: Median end to end Clearance time in working days of PIP advanced claims awarded following a fixed term award due to end after 2^nd October 2020.

*Please note that for Normal Rules advanced claims, there were 20 claimants who were awarded a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) fixed term award at initial decision due to end after 2^nd October 2020 who have had their advanced Claim awarded up to 31^st October 2020 (the latest data available).

Because of the small number of claims in this category we are unable to provide an average for the clearance time in this instance. Calculating averages for small populations has a risk of misrepresentative results skewed by non-typical values. This is in line with our practice for PIP statistical publications, where averages for populations of less than 50 are suppressed.

Notes

Source: PIP ADS

• The end dates here are recorded as of the initial decision for a New Claim or Reassessment from DLA. This data excludes instances where end dates have been updated following this initial decision.
• PIP data includes both new claims and reassessment claims from Disability Living Allowance.
• This is unpublished data. It should be used with caution and it may be subject to future revision.

• Data on the number of clearances has been rounded to the nearest 10. Medians are rounded to the nearest working day

• Data includes advanced claims registered following either a Normal Rules Short term award with no review or a claim registered following a Special Rules for Terminally Ill claimants that was due to end after 2^nd October 2020.
• Advanced claims are defined as a New Claim or Reassessment from DLA registration made by a claimant with an existing award either less than 6 months prior to the end date or any time after the end date of an existing award.