§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what the average processing time is for Attendance Allowance for(a) first-time claims and (b) appeals for claims to be reconsidered for each quarter over the last three years. [136805]
§ Mr. Bayley[holding answer 7 November 2000]: The information is not available in the form requested. The following table gives figures, for each quarter of the last three years, for the average number of days taken to process an initial Attendance Allowance (AA) claim (excluding accelerated processing under special rules for terminal illness), and the average number of days taken to review a claim (including existing claims). From 18 October 1999 reconsideration was introduced to replace the review process. All data are subject to rounding to whole days.
Quarter Initial claims Reviews1 Reconsiderations April-June 1998 22 39 — July-September 1998 23 40 — October-December 1998 24 41 — January-March 1999 25 43 — April-June 1999 29 39 — July-September 1999 30 40 — October-December 1999 30 241 333 January-March 2000 32 243 355 April-June 2000 36 — 59 July-September 2000 34 — 54 1All reviews, including review from new claims 2 Cases where requests for review received before 18 October 1999 3Cases where requests for review received on or after 18 October 1999 New procedures for assessing claims for AA were introduced in the third quarter of 1999 to improve the accuracy of decisions on entitlement. Customers can now receive clearer explanations of decisions on their benefit entitlement. Initially these changes led to significant 230W increases in the time it took to process each case which, together with a growing caseload, created a temporary backlog of work. This has been tackled as a priority, and as decision-makers have become accustomed to the new procedures, the backlog has now been cleared.