Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the 27.5 week timescale for completing change in circumstance requests for child Disability Living Allowance claims on those children and their families.

The average journey time for change in circumstances for child Disability Living Allowance is 13 weeks. In certain cases, we are experiencing delays in the gathering of further evidence from the NHS, however, where possible, we are looking to expedite this by obtaining it from the parent/guardian of the child instead.

We have seen a significant increase in child Disability Living Allowance claims and therefore need to deploy our people accordingly to ensure we balance workloads to manage the entire service.