Employment and Support Allowance: Ipswich

(asked on 21st March 2019) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will take steps to allocate additional resources to reduce the waiting time for a tribunal hearing for employment and support allowance in Ipswich.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 26th March 2019

In the last 12 months we have allocated 7 judges to Ipswich as primary or secondary venue, 2 medical members and 2 Disability Qualified Panel Members (DQPMs)

In Norfolk and Suffolk there is a pool of 6 staff who are deployed to clerk the SSCS hearing venues which are situated in Ipswich, Kings Lynn and Norwich. An additional member of staff will be joining this team from the 1st April 2019 to facilitate additional hearings to be held in Norfolk and Suffolk, subject to judicial availability.

The Ministry of Justice recognises there are delays in the system and it is in the process of recruiting more Judicial office holders in order to increase capacity and help to reduce waiting times for appellants. In the Social Security and Child Support (SSCS) jurisdiction, 225 new medical members have already been appointed and 119 disability qualified members have recently been recruited. The SSCS jurisdiction will also benefit from the fact that 250 fee-paid judges and 100 salaried judges are being recruited across tribunals more widely. In addition, we have recently launched a new digital service to enable speedier processing of appeals and provide a better service for all parties to the proceedings. Information on the new digital service can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-online-service-launched-for-pip-appeal

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