Recommendation 11

Once an application for support has been approved, customers can submit claims for reimbursement of costs incurred.15 There has been a backlog of requests for payment, with the number of outstanding requests more than quadrupling from 6,900 at 31 March 2022 to 31,700 at 31 March 2025.16 The Department told us that payments were now being issued within its standard of 10 working days. It said that it had prioritised eliminating the payments backlog because the customers involved had already had their awards approved and their employers were expecting costs to be reimbursed.17 The applications backlog