Social Security Benefits

(asked on 19th November 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of new claims for (a) jobseeker's allowance and (b) employment and support allowance were processed within (i) five days and (ii) 10 days or longer within the most recent 12 months for which data are available.


Answered by
Alok Sharma Portrait
Alok Sharma
COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 27th November 2018

The information requested is shown in the table below:

Claims processed in 5 working days

%of claims processed in 5 working days

Claims processed in 10 working days

%of claims processed in 10 working days

Claims processed in 21 working days

%of claims processed in 21 working days

Total claims processed

Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)

165,570

23.53%

578,170

82.17%

689,600

98.00%

703,660

Employment & Support Allowance (ESA)

248,540

55.36%

358,830

79.93%

415,590

92.57%

448,930

Notes:

The period the data covers is from 1 November 2017 to 31 October 2018.

All volumes are rounded to the nearest 10. For context figures for the total claims cleared have also been provided.

The claims cleared within 10 and 21 days figures are cumulative and as such includes the claims cleared within 5 or 10 days respectively.

Claim processing times may be affected by the verification issues (such as wage slips). ESA and JSA claimants are paid in arrears, usually on a fortnightly basis.

The data provided relates to the initial ESA assessment phase prior to the Work Capability Assessment.

This data is from the Management Information System Programme (MISP), a Departmental

performance management, data capture and reporting tool. This type of internal management information does not form part of the official statistics outputs that are released by the Department in

accordance with the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice.

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