Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 14
14
The Department told us that its plan was to arrest the growth in the applications...
Conclusion
The Department told us that its plan was to arrest the growth in the applications backlog over the next few months, as it increased the number of staff working on the scheme, and then for the backlog to be back down to where it should be within 18 months to two years.24 The Department more than doubled the number of staff working on the scheme, from an average of 247 full-time equivalents in 2021–22 to 588 in 2024–25.25 It said that, by the end of March 2026, staffing would be up to 648 and that it planned to increase the number of case managers by a further few hundred once it had improved the consistency of its decision-making. It would also continue its efforts to improve case managers’ productivity.26