DWP tests new Personal Independence Payment rules for 150,000 claimants
The Department for Work and Pensions has rolled out a pilot of new personal independence payment assessment rules to about four per cent of claims nationally, a change the department says could already affect more than 150,000 disabled people. Under the pilot, healthcare professionals who carry out assessments are limited to basic information gathering while DWP case managers take over decisions on descriptors and entitlement.
The change shifts a step that has sat with healthcare professionals with years of clinical experience under the current system. Disability Rights UK said the changes would “create chaos and injustice in the processes for claiming PIP and possibly the WCA” and described the pilot as “a recipe for disaster.”
Transform Decision Making pilot
The pilot sits inside the department's secret Transform Decision Making programme, which does not appear to have been mentioned publicly online or in parliament. John Pring reported that the pilot project could already affect more than 150,000 disabled people.
Under the current PIP process, healthcare professionals assess 10 daily living activities and two mobility activities, then write a report recommending which descriptors apply and what level of support a claimant should receive. In the pilot, that responsibility has moved to DWP case managers, marking the clearest change for people going through an assessment now.
Disability Rights UK response
Disability Rights UK called it “absolutely astonishing” that the department introduced the programme at the same time as the Timms Review of PIP. The organisation also said the changes could create problems beyond PIP, because the department is exploring whether the approach could be extended to the work capability assessment process.
That wider reach gives the pilot a broader significance for claimants who may face another assessment system later. For now, the practical point is straightforward: cases in the pilot are already being handled with fewer clinical judgments from assessors and more sign-off from DWP civil servants.
More than 150,000 claims
The department said this week that the pilot had been rolled out to about four per cent of PIP claims nationally. That means the change is not theoretical or limited to planning papers; it is already affecting a large, defined slice of claimants.
Disabled people whose claims fall within the pilot are the first to face the new division of labor between assessor and case manager. The question now is how far the department intends to take the model if it continues beyond this small-scale trial.
