Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time is for a Child Maintenance Service appeal to be heard under Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service in (a) Wales and (b) England and Wales.

General information about waiting times for appeals in the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) (SSCS) are published at:

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

The average waiting time for Child Maintenance appeals between July and September 2019 (the latest period for which data are available) was (a) 46 weeks in Wales and (b) 40 weeks in England and Wales.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and are the best data that are available. Data include appeals cleared with and without a Tribunal hearing.

Waiting times are calculated from receipt of an appeal to its final disposal. 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.