Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average waiting time for a complaint lodged with the Independent Case Examiner to be allocated to an investigation case manager was in the last 12 months.

In the 12 month period from 1 September 2016 to 31 August 2017, the average time taken to allocate a complaint to an investigation case manager was 45 weeks.

Improvements in complaint handling within DWP mean that the ICE Office receive far fewer cases which can be resolved, to the complainant’s satisfaction, without a full investigation of the evidence. This means that the ICE process is reserved for more complex cases which are, by nature, more time consuming.