Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the target time is to process a new Personal Independence Payment claim.

While there is no target for clearance times, we are committed to ensuring people can access financial support through Personal Independence Payment (PIP) in a timely manner, taking into account the need to review all available evidence. Reducing customer journey times for PIP claimants is a priority for the Department and we are working constantly to make improvements to our service, including using a blend of phone, video and face-to-face assessments, increasing case manager and assessment provider health professional resource and prioritising new claims, whilst safeguarding the continuity of existing awards to ensure they do not go out of payment.

We are seeing an improvement in clearance times and the latest statistics show that the average end-to-end journey has steadily reduced from 26 weeks in August 2021 to 18 weeks at the end of July this year.