PIP assessments criticised

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) started to introduce Personal Independence Payments (PIP) to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) (received by 3.3 million people) from April 2013. Up to the end of 2018, 1.7 million people in receipt of DLA are due to be assessed for PIP, along with 1.9 million new claimants. Through PIP, the DWP aims to reduce benefit spending by £780 million over the current Spending Review Period. In most PIP claims, Atos Healthcare and Capital Health and Wellbeing have carried out an assessment of need.

In June 2014, the Public Accounts Committee published a report into PIP, branding its implementation a fiasco. Committee Chair Margaret Hodge set out that:

• many people had to wait more than six months for their claims to be decided;

• by October 2013, the Department had only made 16% of the decisions it had expected to have made by that time;

• terminally ill people were having to wait on average 28 days for a decision, 180% longer than expected;

• some claimants were forced to turn to food banks, loans and charities to support the extra costs of living associated with their disability; and

• four in ten claimants in Atos areas had to travel over an hour to be assessed when it had promised that between 75% and 90% of claimants would travel less than 30 minutes to an assessment centre.

Many charities have criticised the DWP’s decision to continue rolling out the benefit following pilots despite the huge backlog of claims.