Recommendation 5

The National Audit Office report noted that for claims received after March 2020 (the only data for which the Department had detailed process data) only 10% (102 claims) had reached payment approval stage. These 102 claims took on average 177 days to reach payment approval, with half of the cases requiring between 109 and 250 days. These figures excluded older cases which may have taken longer.10 The Department explained that cases often took significant amounts of time because of the need to obtain supporting 1 C&AG’s Report, Investigation into the Windrush Compensation Scheme, Session 2021–21, HC 65, 21 May 2021 2 C&AG’s Report, para 1 3 C&AG’s Report, para 1 4 C&AG’s Report, para 2 5 C&AG’s Report, para 4.2 6 Q27, 29 7 Windrush Compensation Scheme data: May 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), accessed 29 June 2021 8 Qq 27–28, 36–37 9 Q 29 10 C&AG’s Report, para 4.9 8 Windrush Compensation Scheme information from other government departments but recognised it took a long time to ‘get going’ on claims.11 In April 2021, the Department announced that 21 people had died after submitting a claim but before receiving compensation.12 We questioned, therefore, whether there had been sufficient urgency to make changes given that people were dying while waiting for the completion of their claims.13