Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the longest wait was to receive an approval for an Access to Work application in the last 12 months.

The longest wait to receive an approval for an Access to Work application in the last 12 months was 254 working days. This was primarily made up of wait time for allocation to a case manager and wait time for the customer to provide the information requested to progress the application.

Access to Work has received a significant increase in applications over the last year and have recruited new staff to meet the increased demand and reduce the time it takes to make decisions. Customers making new applications where they are starting work within the next 4 weeks or have a grant coming to an end that requires renewal, are prioritised to ensure customers are able to enter, and remain in the, labour market. We are also transforming the Access to Work service through increased digitalisation, that will make the service more efficient, will make the application process easier, and improve the time taken from application through to decision.

Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standards. They should therefore be treated with caution.