To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average wait for a decision on a social fund application was in each year since 2003.
Answered on
27 October 2014
Table 1 below shows the average wait (in days) for decisions on a Social Fund application for each year from 2003 and a breakdown by application type.
No data is provided for 2014. This is because the number of applications and waiting times vary seasonally, meaning that an average only covering part of the year is not comparable with whole year averages shown from 2003-2013.
Average wait (days) | Funeral Payments | Community Care Grants | Crisis Loans | Budgeting Loans | Sure Start Maternity Grants |
2003 | 13.1 | 8.3 | 1.2 | 2.7 | 4.7 |
2004 | 13.5 | 8.2 | 1.3 | 3.0 | 4.0 |
2005 | 12.1 | 7.5 | 1.4 | 2.9 | 4.0 |
2006 | 12.5 | 9.1 | 1.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 |
2007 | 13.4 | 10.9 | 1.6 | 4.5 | 4.8 |
2008 | 14.3 | 11.3 | 1.8 | 5.1 | 5.3 |
2009 | 14.8 | 13.3 | 2.0 | 5.3 | 5.0 |
2010 | 15.3 | 8.9 | 2.1 | 5.4 | 4.7 |
2011 | 13.1 | 7.5 | 2.1 | 5.0 | 4.3 |
2012 | 14.6 | 7.5 | 3.0 | 4.9 | 3.6 |
2013 | 17.1 | 5.5 | 4.0 |
Notes
1. These figures do not include applications which were processed clerically and have not yet been entered on to the Social Fund Computer System.
2. No average wait time is reported for Community Care Grants or Crisis Loans in 2013. This is because these payments were replaced by Local Welfare Provision in March 2013.
3. The clearance time for an individual Social Fund loan or grant is measured in whole working days from the date the application is received until the date the decision is taken. The minimum clearance time recorded for an individual case is one working day, even if the application is cleared immediately.
4. Cold Weather Payments are not included in Table 1. These are made automatically if the claimant is eligible at the time of the cold weather trigger, so there is no decision to be made.
5. All figures are provided to 1 decimal place.