Personal Independence Payment

(asked on 1st July 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make it her Department's policy to process mandatory reconsiderations for personal independence payment claims within 15 working days.


Answered by
Justin Tomlinson Portrait
Justin Tomlinson
This question was answered on 8th July 2019

Mandatory reconsideration (MR) decisions are made without delay, but the focus is on making sure that the decision under dispute is thoroughly reviewed not on how long it takes to review it.

We are engaging with stakeholders to explore how we can improve the MR process. We have recently implemented a new approach in PIP which includes contacting claimants, where appropriate, to see if there is information that would enable us to change the decision ourselves. To support this, we are investing additional time for communication, evidence gather and review – including providing time for claimants to provide more information - which means that some cases can take longer. However, this approach supports our aim - to make the right decision as early as possible - so claimants don’t need to progress to the appeal stage.

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