Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the (a) average waiting time is and (b) range of waiting times are for a tribunal hearing for personal independence payment from the date of the case being received by the tribunal service until the date of the hearing in each year since 2014 in (i) St Helens, (ii) Merseyside and (iii) nationally.

This information is not held centrally.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (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.

Information about waiting times for PIP appeals to the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) (SSCS) is published at:

www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics

Latest figures for PIP (to December 2018) indicate that since it was introduced, 3.9 million decisions have been made. Of these, 10% have been appealed and 5% have been overturned at Tribunals.