The average time taken to process a Long Term Care claim (FOI)

​Request

What is the average time taken to process a Long Term Care claim? What is the backlog in claims? Both in numbers and financially?

Response

The Social Security department can confirm it holds information about the processing of claims for Long Term Care benefit(s).

The time taken to process Long Term Care (LTC) claims varies according to the claim: whether it is ‘means tested’ (requiring financial information to be provided) or for a Universal Benefit claim (self-funding up to the care cost cap).

To calculate an average processing time, the LTC team processed 47 claims last month with an average processing time of just under 12 claims a week or two point four claims per day.

Currently within the LTC team, there are 41 claims that are in the processing queue where we have received the necessary documentation. The total value of these claims is approximately £484,000.

The LTC team have a remaining balance of 50 claims that are awaiting further information from a third party to enable the claims to be ready for processing. 

Due to a dependency on the third part for further information, a value cannot be attributed to these 50 claims at this stage.