Social Security Benefits

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the average processing time for claims received for (a) pension credit, (b) jobseeker’s allowance and (c) winter fuel allowance in (i) the UK, (ii) the north-east, (iii) Teesside and (iv) Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency was in the latest period for which figures are available. (282940)

Information is not available in the format requested.

Pension credit information is not available broken down geographically. Information on the national average actual clearance times (AACT) for pension credit for 2008-09 is in the following table.

*Pension credit clearance times: Great Britain, 2008-09*
	Working days/number
Target AACT (Working days)	15
Total Processed (Number)	298,075
AACT (Working days)	15
Note: The AACT is calculated by dividing the total number of working days taken to clear cases by the total number of cases cleared. Source: Pension Service Legacy System.

Information for jobseeker’s allowance is not available by local authority district or parliamentary constituency. The available information for jobseeker’s allowance is in the following table.

*Jobseeker’s allowance average actual clearance times, June 2008 to May 2009*
	Working days
Great Britain	10.1
North East Benefit Delivery	9.3
Newcastle BDC	8.5
Sunderland BDC	9.7
Stockton BDC	9.6
Source: Management Information System Programme.

Information is not available for processing times for winter fuel payments as the process is largely automatic.

Winter fuel payments are made to eligible customers aged 60 or over, each year to provide help with fuel bills.

During 2008-09 DWP delivered automatic winter fuel payments to over 99.9 per cent. of eligible customers by the end of December, and as a result, over 12.5 million customers received their payment before Christmas 2008.

We paid over £2.7 billion in winter fuel payments to over 12.6 million customers.

Volume 495: debated on Wednesday 8 July 2009