Personal Independence Payment: Cancer

(asked on 1st June 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average waiting time was from application to a decision being made for young people with cancer who applied for personal independence payments over the last 12 months.


Answered by
Sarah Newton Portrait
Sarah Newton
This question was answered on 6th June 2018

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claimants with cancer aged 16 to 24 assessed under Normal Rules, waited an average (median) of 11 and 14 calendar weeks from the point of registration to a decision being made for new claims and Disability Living Allowance (DLA) reassessments respectively. For claimants with cancer aged 16 to 24 assessed under Special Rules for the Terminally Ill, the average (median) was 6 and 7 working days for new claims and DLA reassessment claims respectively. This data includes cases on which a decision was made between 1st February 2017 and 31st January 2018, the latest full year for which data is available.

Information on clearance times split by Normal Rules and Special Rules claims and new claim or DLA reassessment claims can be found in the data tables, “Personal Independence Payment: Official Statistics to January 2018” within tables 5A-B here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-april-2013-to-january-2018.

Source: PIP Computer System claimant records.

Notes:

1. “Cancer” is defined here by claimants recorded on the PIP Computer System with “Neoplasms (C00 - D48)” in the ICD summary code. ICD summary codes are based on the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, published by the World Health Organisation. For reporting purposes, the disability conditions as recorded on the PIP IT system have been mapped to reflect as closely as possible the appropriate ICD10 code.

2. Figures have been rounded to the nearest whole number of weeks for Normal Rules and working days for Special Rules for the Terminally Ill.

3. Data includes normal rules and special rules as recorded at the point of the DWP decision, in accordance with the measure. It is possible for claims to transition between Normal/Special Rules and new claims/reassessments during the course of the claimant journey.

4. Figures for reassessments include Rising 16s. (Individuals previously on child DLA who are reassessed for PIP upon reaching the age of 16).

5. The figures are the average (median) clearance time of claims cleared between 1st February 2017 and 31st January 2018.

6. The median time is the middle value if you were to order all the times within the distribution from lowest value to highest value. The median is presented here instead of the mean because the mean can be unduly affected by outlying cases (e.g. cases were the person has been hard to reach due to being in prison, hospital, failed to attend the assessment on numerous occasions etc.)

7. The 'Registration to DWP decision (end to end)' clearance time is measured as the average time between the date of registration of the claim and the date of the DWP decision to either award or disallow the claim. It does not include claims that were withdrawn by the claimant or claims that were disallowed by DWP pre-referral to the Assessment Providers (e.g. for failure to meet basic eligibility criteria or failure to return the Part 2 form within the time limit).

8. A claimant may have multiple disabling conditions but only the primary condition is recorded on PIP systems.

9. This is unpublished data and it should be used with caution and it may be subject to future revision.

10. Claimants are aged 16 to 24 (i.e. aged 16 and over and under 25) at the time of the decision. This is in line with CLIC Sargent’s definition of “young people”. https://www.clicsargent.org.uk/content/cancer-facts-and-figures.

Reticulating Splines