Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) hears appeals against Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) decisions on entitlement to employment and support allowance (ESA) and disability living allowance (DLA).The following table shows the average time taken from submission of an appeal to the DWP until the date of the first appeal hearing at HMCTS for ESA and DLA appeals at the Sutton Processing Centre, which serves the Greater London area. Average waiting times—Employment and support allowance and disability living allowance for processing centre in Greater London 2008-09¹ 2009-10 2010-11 April to December 2011 ESA DLA ESA DLA ESA DLA ESA DLA Average time in weeks from submission to DWP to receipt at HMCTS n/a 7.8 7.4 8.8 8.9 9.6 8.1 7.8 Average time in weeks from receipt at HMCTS to first hearing n/a 9.2 14.1 11.8 16.6 17.2 19.5 22.3 ¹ Employment and Support Allowance was introduced in October 2008 and only 6 ESA appeals were cleared in 2008-09. This low volume means that statistically significant data in not available for this period. Notes: The data provided are taken from management information The data regarding the time from when an appeal is submitted to the DWP until it is received by HMCTS is taken from HMCTS' database and relies on the date of submission recorded by DWP. The Tribunal does not measure the time from receipt at DWP to receipt at HMCTS and the averages have been calculated by subtracting the time from receipt at HMCTS to first hearing from the total average time. HMCTS is working hard to increase the capacity of the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal (SSCS) and reduce waiting times. It has increased hearing rooms; the number of cases listed in each session; and the number of sessions held; streamlined its administrative processes; started running double shifts in its largest processing centre so that more appeals can be processed each day; started running Saturday sittings in some of the busiest venues (where there is demand and where it is feasible); set up a customer contact centre to deal with telephone enquiries for the processing sites, freeing up other staff to focus on processing appeals and arranging hearings; and recruited more judges and panel members to hear more appeals.All of this is having a positive effect. The number of disposals has increased significantly from 279,000 in 2009-10 to 380,000 in 2010-11. Disposals outstripped receipts in each of the 12 months between January 2011 and December 2011 and the number of cases waiting to be heard reduced by over 44,000 between April and December. The average waiting time has stabilised nationally, and is beginning to fall in many venues.