PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Social Security Benefits: Appeals (11 January 2016)

The First-tier Tribunal – Social Security and Child Support (SSCS) administered by HM Courts & Tribunals Service, hears appeals against Department for Work and Pensions’ decisions on a range of benefits.

1. Information about the timeliness of SSCS appeals is published by the Ministry of Justice in the Tribunals and Gender Recognition Certificate Statistics Quarterly. The data requested can be viewed at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.

2. The following table provides the age in weeks of the oldest case cleared at a tribunal hearing in the years 2010/11 to 2014/15[1]:

A number of factors can influence the time it takes for an appeal to reach final conclusion. In particular, these data include the total elapsed time for cases which were heard, appealed to the Upper Tribunal, and subsequently reheard at the First-tier Tribunal. The age of one case at clearance in any one year does not reflect the experience of the vast majority of appellants.

[1] The age of the oldest case disposed of in the period April to September 2015 (the latest period for which statistics have been published) has not been included as this only reflects a part-year.