• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Benefits and Poverty / PIP telephone waiting-times continue to rise, DWP figures show
Tom Pursglove giving evidence in a Commons committee room

PIP telephone waiting-times continue to rise, DWP figures show

By John Pring on 15th June 2023 Category: Benefits and Poverty

Listen

Waiting-times on a benefit enquiry line have continued to rise, despite the minister for disabled people promising that his department was recruiting extra staff to bring them down.

In April, Tom Pursglove (pictured) admitted that the average waiting time in March for the personal independence payment (PIP) telephone enquiry line was 37 minutes.

He told Labour’s Beth Winter on 26 April that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was “currently experiencing higher than forecast call volumes to the PIP and DLA telephony enquiry lines” and had “recruited additional staff onto our telephony teams”, while there was “on-going recruitment to further increase resources”.

But Disability News Service has secured new figures from DWP which show that waiting-times have continued to rise.

In January, the “average speed of answer” was 23 minutes; in February, it rose to 31 minutes; and in March, it increased to 37 minutes and one second, before increasing by nearly two minutes in April, to 38 minutes and 50 seconds.

These are just average waiting-times, so many claimants will have experienced much longer waits.

DNS reported last month how disabled people were describing “disgraceful” and stressful waiting-times on the PIP enquiry line.

They described how they were facing “exhausting” waits that were more than twice as long as the average figures quoted by Pursglove in parliament, and were also having to cope with malfunctioning software that cut them off as they tried to navigate DWP’s automated voice-response technology.

One disabled woman said she was on hold for about 80 minutes while she waited for a conversation about her PIP claim that lasted just three minutes.

Another said she had had to wait as long as 90 minutes to speak to a DWP adviser.

Waiting-times for the employment and support allowance enquiry line have also continued to increase, and are now more than double where they were six months ago, according to the new DWP figures, although they are still at a much lower level than PIP waiting-times.

In November 2022, the average speed of answer on the ESA enquiry line was more than six minutes, rising to eight minutes in January, 13 minutes in March, and more than 14 minutes in April.

Asked if Pursglove was concerned that waiting-times, particularly on the PIP line, were continuing to rise, and why his efforts to address the increases did not appear to be working, a DWP spokesperson refused to comment.

This is now the third time the department has refused to comment about the PIP telephone enquiry line waiting-times.

Instead, DWP offered a near-identical statement to the one released a month ago, which again did not refer to telephone waiting-times.

The spokesperson said: “Reducing customer journey times is a priority for the department and we are making constant improvements to our service, including expanding dedicated teams and using telephone and video appointments to make the process faster and to deliver a more efficient, user-centred service.”

Meanwhile, the Benefits and Work website has published figures obtained from DWP via a freedom of information request which show nearly half a million callers to the PIP helpline in April were deliberately disconnected by the department before they could even wait in a queue.

Benefits and Work said in its report: “The proportion of calls cut-off before entering the queue is now greater than the proportion who even get to wait for an hour or more before giving up or getting disconnected.”

It added: “The worry is that the DWP is now in a downward spiral of increasingly awful customer service.”

 

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…

Share this post:

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on RedditShare on LinkedIn

Tags: Benefits and Work disability benefits DWP Freedom of Information PIP Tom Pursglove

A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Related

Disabled MP who quit government over benefit cuts tells DNS: ‘The consequences will be devastating’
26th June 2025
Minister finally admits that working-age benefits spending is stable, despite months of ‘spiralling’ claims
26th June 2025
Timms says cuts must go ahead, despite being reminded of risk that disabled claimants could die
26th June 2025

Primary Sidebar

On the left of the image are multiple heads of different colours - white, aqua, red, light brown, and dark green - all grouped together, then the words ‘Campaign for Disability Justice. Sign up to support. #OpportunitySecurityRespect’
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Access

Latest Stories

Disabled MP who quit government over benefit cuts tells DNS: ‘The consequences will be devastating’

Disabled peers plan to ‘amend, amend, amend, amend, amend’ after assisted dying bill reaches Lords

Minister finally admits that working-age benefits spending is stable, despite months of ‘spiralling’ claims

This bill opens the door to scandal, abuse and injustice, disabled activists say after assisted dying bill vote

Timms says cuts must go ahead, despite being reminded of risk that disabled claimants could die

Absence of disabled people’s voices from assisted dying bill has been ‘astonishing’, says disabled MP

Timms misleads MPs on DWP transparency and cover-ups, as he gives evidence on PIP review

Ministers are considering further extension to disability hate crime laws, after pledge on ‘aggravated’ offences

Making all self-driving pilot schemes accessible would be ‘counter-productive’ and slow us down, says minister

Involve disabled people ‘meaningfully’ from the start when developing digital assistive tech, says report

Advice and Information

Readspeaker
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Threads
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web