The personal independence payment (PIP) system is failing to ensure disabled people have access to adequate incomes, with inaccurate assessments, poor decision‑making and a lack of trust leaving many disabled people without essential support.
Z2K’s submission to the Timms Review of PIP calls for a redesigned system that is fairer, more transparent and rooted in lived experience, including improved use of evidence, more accurate eligibility criteria, and a less adversarial claims process.
Z2K's recommendations
- The broad framework of the current PIP eligibility criteria should be retained.
- The PIP claim forms and assessment templates should be reviewed to explain and more effectively prompt consideration of the reliability and fluctuating condition rules.
- PIP assessment processes, training materials and guidance should be reviewed to ensure sufficient consideration of the reliability and fluctuating conditions rules.
- Introduce a streamlined eligibility pathway enabling claimants with clear, verified evidence of specified diagnosed conditions or clinical assessments to bypass the standard PIP application process.
- PIP assessments should be carried out by condition-focused assessors where possible.
- HCPs and decision-makers should be required to summarise and evaluate a claimant’s medical evidence.
- PIP consultations should only be carried out when other avenues to obtain evidence have been exhausted.
- HCPs should no longer record ‘informal observations’ or rely on this as part of the decision-making process.
- More detailed decision letters and a copy of the full assessment report should be provided at the point of decision.
- Any PIP claimant whose main disability or health condition is lifelong or progressive should be given an ongoing award of PIP.
- Where a claimant’s needs have not significantly changed since the previous decision, no detailed assessment against the eligibility criteria should be carried out and the existing award should be maintained.
- Mandatory reconsideration clearance times should be reduced to a median of no more than 30 calendar days.
- The effectiveness of mandatory reconsideration should be reviewed.
- The government should introduce an independent advisory process to recommend minimum benefit rates.
- The government should conduct a targeted review of the eligibility criteria that addresses the extension in scope of PIP.
- The government should review the severe conditions criteria as part of PIP becoming the single gateway to health-related and disability benefits.