Government hires 80+judges to cut welfare appeals backlog: report

The government has hired more than 80 new judges to tackle a major backlog in welfare appeals, The Times has reported.

The newspaper said the recruitment exercise was the first time that extra posts had been needed since 2007, when ten Social Entitlement Chamber judges were recruited.

According to The Times, in 2010-11 the number of appeals in the Social Entitlement Chamber were 23% higher than the preceding year and 72% up on 2008-09.

Ministers recently unveiled changes to the Work Capability Assessment, which is part of a government programme to see whether claimants on incapacity benefit are fit to work. The test is seen as one of the key reasons for the rise in appeals.

A Department for Work and Pensions source told The Times that the test improvements and the increased number of judges meant that the appeals system was coping.

However, claimant lawyers said a greater number of their clients were now seeking to appeal adverse decisions.

Arvin Narendra, a lawyer at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, told the paper that some cases were now taking up to a year to go from lodging the initial appeal to having the final tribunal hearing date.