Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate he has made of the average waiting time for mandatory reconsideration of benefit decisions in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England; and what steps his Department is taking to ensure that mandatory reconsiderations are conducted (i) quickly and (ii) effectively.

The median mandatory reconsideration (MR) clearance times have been provided for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Universal Credit (UC) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) benefit decisions. To provide information across all other DWP administered benefits would incur disproportionate cost.

Median clearance times have been provided as the mean can be unduly affected by outlying cases.

Personal Independence Payment

The median clearance times for PIP Mandatory Reconsiderations, normal rules between August 2022 and July 2023, were:

a) 28 calendar days for Coventry

b) 28 calendar days for West Midlands

c) 28 calendar days for England

Notes:

1. Each PIP claim can have more than one reconsideration registered against it. The above includes all MR decisions (excluding withdrawn and cancelled).
2. The PIP MR clearance times are based on the clearance times from the date the MR was registered to the date the MR was cleared.
3. DWP offers particular support for those coming to the end of their life, known as the Special Rules for End of Life (SREL). This was formerly called Special Rules for Terminal Illness (SRTI). Cases which are not processed under SREL are referred to as ‘normal rules’ claims. The status of claims as 'normal rules' or 'SREL' is shown as at the point of registration.
4. Definition of median: The median time is the middle value if you were to order all the times within the distribution from lowest value to highest value.

Universal Credit

The median clearance times for UC Mandatory Reconsiderations between August 2022 and July 2023 were:

a) 37 calendar days for Coventry

b) 35 calendar days for West Midlands

c) 36 calendar days for England

Notes:

1. Each UC claim can have more than one reconsideration registered against it. The above includes all MR decisions (excluding withdrawn and cancelled).
2. The UC MR clearance times are based on the clearance times from the date the MR was registered to the date the MR was cleared.
3. This data on UC MR clearance times is unpublished data. It should be used with caution and it may be subject to future revision.
4. For a small number of UC claims with an MR (1%) it was not possible to determine the geography information, so these have not been included in the figures.

1. Definition of median: The median time is the middle value if you were to order all the times within the distribution from lowest value to highest value.

Employment and Support Allowance

ESA Work Capability Assessment MR clearance times are available on Stat-Xplore: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/. It can be found by going through “ESA Work Capability Assessments”, “Mandatory Reconsideration – Clearances” “Table 4 – Median Clearance Times by Date of Decision”. It is then possible to restrict to Coventry, West Midlands and England.

In law there is no time limit within which a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) decision must be made. This reflects the overarching policy that the focus should be on making the right decision and not the speed of clearance. Of course, decisions will be made without delay but if the decision maker considers that more time is needed to gather or consider evidence, then they will give themselves that time to ensure they are confident that the decision ultimately made is correct.

We constantly review our processes to ensure we are providing the best possible customer service to customers requesting a mandatory reconsideration, both in terms of speed of dealing with the request and quality of decision making. For example, we have improved the system functionality in UC to allow some customers to directly upload evidence to inform a decision to improve the customer experience. We have also recruited circa 400 additional colleagues into the Dispute Resolution Service over the summer to increase capacity and reduce waiting times.