Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 3 December 2018 to Question 195064, what the maximum length of time was between the date when a First Tier Tribunal personal independence payment appeal was lodged and heard for cases involving claimants in Blaenau Gwent during 2017-18.

This information is not held centrally.

HMCTS statistics are not calculated from receipt of the appeal to the hearing, but from receipt of the appeal to the disposal of the case. An appeal is not necessarily disposed of at its first hearing. The final disposal decision on the appeal may be reached after an earlier hearing had been adjourned (which may be directed by the judge for a variety of reasons, such as to seek further evidence), or after an earlier hearing date had been postponed (again, for a variety of reasons, often at the request of the appellant). An appeal may also have been decided at an earlier date by the First-tier Tribunal, only for the case to have gone on to the Upper Tribunal, to be returned once again to the First-tier, for its final disposal.