My first unemployment payment still has not arrived, call-centre agent here

I applied for unemployment in Birmingham 22 weeks ago and the status page still says pending. It has been a long 22 weeks. The page shows my claim as open but no payment date. Has anyone been through this? How long did it take in the end?

Thanks for writing this out. I went through something close to it last year, and it settled down once I kept a simple log of every call and form.