Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times on Access to Work applications.

Access to Work has continued to improve wait times for customers applying to the service. During the summer wait times have been halved.

Access to Work has received a significant increase in demand and applications over the last year. To address this and to reduce waiting times we have recruited new staff in the year and continue to redeploy staff to reduce decision times. Our latest cohort of redeployed staff started in November. We are now consolidating their learning, which will grow capability and build additional available resource into the next quarter.