Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate he has made of the average waiting time for mandatory reconsideration of a benefit decision in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England; and what steps his Department is taking to ensure that mandatory reconsiderations are carried out (i) quickly and (ii) effectively.

We endeavor to complete Mandatory Reconsiderations without delay. Recently, we added over 400 staff to the Disputes Resolution Service to help ensure that applications are dealt with in a timely manner. Our overarching focus, however, is on taking the time necessary to thoroughly review all the available evidence, to help ensure we make the right decision.

Information on Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) Work Capability Assessment (WCA) Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) clearances are available on GOV.UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-independence-payment-statistics

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/employment-and-support-allowance-outcomes-of-work-capability-assessment.

Additional breakdowns of the figures, including by region, local authority and parliamentary constituency, are available on Stat-Xplore for PIP and ESA WCA MR clearance times:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/.

Guidance for users is available at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html.

PIP MR clearance times for financial year 2021-22 are shown in the table below. Additional figures by region, local authority and parliamentary constituency, are available in the tables released with the PIP publication referenced above, specifically Tables 4B(ii) and 4B(iii).

Table 1: Median PIP MR clearance times (calendar days), Normal Rules, from April 2021 to March 2022

*Source: PIP statistics to July; table 4B_(ii)

**Source: PIP statistics to July; table 4B_(iii)

***Source: PIP ADS

Notes:

1. Each PIP claim can have more than one reconsideration registered against it. The above includes all MR decisions (excluding withdrawn and cancelled).
2. The PIP MR clearance times are based on the clearance times from the point of registration to the date the MR was cleared.
3. DWP offers particular support for those coming to the end of their life, known as Special Rules for End of Life (SREL). This was formerly called Special Rules for Terminal Illness (SRTI). Cases which are not processed under SREL are referred to as ‘normal rules’ claims. The status of claims as 'normal rules' or 'SREL' is shown as at the point of registration.
4. To provide information across all other DWP administered benefits would incur disproportionate cost.
5. Definition of MR: Claimants who wish to dispute a decision made on their PIP claim are required to ask the department to reconsider the decision before they can lodge an appeal with His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service. MRs can arise for various reasons, such as omitting to tell DWP about relevant evidence during the initial decision-making process; this could include not returning forms required as part of the claim.
6. Definition of median: The median time is the middle value if you were to order all the times within the distribution from lowest value to highest value.