Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average wait is for mandatory reconsideration of (a) personal independence payment and (b) employment support allowance claims in each of the last three years in Wrexham constituency.

The requested information can be found below:

A) Personal Independence Payment (PIP)

Statistics on Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) clearance times for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claims by parliamentary constituency are planned to be published on 11th June 2019 in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The figures requested will be included within the PIP Official Statistics publication.

It should be noted that the Department’s decision makers are, in relation to PIP, now proactively engaging with claimants at the MR stage to ensure that they have all material evidence before they make their decision. Early indications are that this is helping decision makers.

B) Employment Support Allowance (ESA)

The available information on the average waiting time for MRs of ESA work capability assessments is published and can be found in table 16 here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/esa-outcomes-of-work-capability-assessments-including-mandatory-reconsiderations-and-appeals-march-2019

It is the intention to produce further geographical breakdowns of these statistics in the future.