Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many of the staff working on the operation of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme are (a) full time and (b) part time employees; what is the number of full time equivalents of the part time employees; and what is the average time taken to process each Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme application.

There are currently 72 full-time employees and 27 part-time employees in NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) working on the operation of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, with the overall full-time equivalents of part-time employees being 18.2. These figures do not include current vacancies.

From 1 May 2022 to 30 April 2023, the average number of days for a claim to conclude is 215 calendar days. However, processing times for claims vary significantly depending on the individual circumstances of the claim and in particular on the length of time it takes for healthcare providers to send the claimant’s medical records to NHSBSA. To reduce the length of time it takes to process cases, Subject Access Requests have been introduced where there is no engagement from a healthcare provider within 28 days.