Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the current average waiting time is for an application for limited capacity to work benefit to be considered.

The Department publishes Employment Support Allowance (ESA) Work Capability Assessment (WCA) statistics online and the latest clearance time statistics available to June 2020 can be accessed in Table 8 here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/esa-outcomes-of-work-capability-assessments-including-mandatory-reconsiderations-and-appeals-january-2021

Statistics on Work Capability Assessments for Universal Credit are currently under development for future publication and have not previously been published as official statistics. We will issue them in due course as an official statistics release in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Whilst the initial statistics will not have median clearance times, these will be developed for publication in due course.