Skip to main content

Thank you for all those of you who attended the Personal Independence Payment(PIP) 2014 courses recently (open and in house courses).

We'd like to share a few of the points during the many interesting discussions that were had-

Key Aims- many of you noted one of the key aims of PIP was to save money. Some key statistics to feedback to your staff meetings were that around 1 in 4 currently on PIP are predicted to come off the benefit altogether. Benefit savings are predicted to be around £2.95 billion. Clients were worried about this. Paul Gray, chair of the Social Security Advisory Committee, will carry out the first independent review of PIP, reporting at the end of this year.

Positives- Like DLA and Attendance Allowance, PIP is likely to remain the subject of benefit take up activity; it is non means tested, doesn't count as income for means tested benefits, can lead to extra premiums for means tested benefits and other passporting provisions and isn't generally affected by work.
Decisions- more of you are seeing decisions on PIP now and you are requesting a Mandatory reconsideration before appeal. No appeals for PIP have yet been heard.

Healthcare professionals- Experience was variable with some of you reporting how friendly and willing to listen they were. There were many examples of appointments being cancelled at the last minute causing considerable distress for clients. There was one example where a comment was made during the medical about reducing the number of claimants on benefit.

Delays- these are common place in all areas with some terminal illness claims taking a month and others types of claims taking many months(up to 9) for a decision. Complaints to ATOS/ Capita with help from MP's tended to help speed things up. There is likely to be a further delay to the roll out of natural 'migration' to allow providers to catch up with the backlog.

Initial Phonecall-PIP1form some of you reported that your clients were struggling with the questions during the initial phone call and this had led to some delaying making a claim.
PIP2 form- the importance of describing the variability of impairment(s)was emphasised, as was identifying which descriptors your client should qualify for.

Home Visits- if a client requested a home assessment then this would often mean even longer assessment delays.

Click here for our in house Personal Independence Payment(PIP) Course. The PIP course will run again in the Autumn on an open basis.

 

View All