Recommendation 14

The Department acknowledged it took longer to process claims than it had expected.54 The National Audit Office calculated that claims took an average of 154 staff hours to process to payment, five times more than the Department originally estimated.55 The Department could not explain how it made its original caseworking estimates but assured us it made them ‘with the best of intentions’.56 It recognised it had misunderstood how complex cases would be and how long it may take to gather information on behalf of claimants from employers and other government departments.57 Operational capacity and capability