Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people claiming benefits under special rules with a form SR1 have been claiming for (a) more than 12 months and (b) less than 12 months.

The Department supports people nearing the end of life through special benefit rules – called the Special Rules for End of Life (SREL). These enable people who are nearing the end of their lives to get faster, easier access to certain benefits, without needing to attend a medical assessment, serve waiting periods and in most cases, receive the highest rate of benefit.

SREL applies to these benefits Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Universal Credit (UC), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), Disability Living Allowance for children (DLAc) and Attendance Allowance (AA).

The department holds some data on special rules for end of life (SREL) claims for PIP and UC based on receipt of the medical evidence form, the SR1, but does not centrally collate equivalent data on SREL claims for AA, DLA and ESA, so we cannot provide the total number of SREL claimants. We have therefore provided data for UC and PIP only below.

*All figures are rounded to the nearest hundred.

The PIP data covers England and Wales and is from October 2024. The UC data covers Great Britain and is from September 2024.

The numbers above count the number of claims for each benefit, not the number of individuals. Some individuals may be counted more than once, as they may be in receipt of both benefits.

It is possible, although rare, to make a SREL claim without a SR1 form, so these data do not necessarily present the full picture in terms of total numbers of SREL claims.

‘DLA: Cases in Payment - Data from May 2018’ and ‘AA: Cases in Payment - Data from May 2018’ data is available on Stat-Xplore by ‘Main Disabling Condition’, this includes ‘Terminally Ill’ claims. This data is available by ‘Duration of Current Claim’. ESA - Data from May 2018 is available on Stat-Xplore by ‘Medical condition’ which includes ‘Neoplasms’. This data is available by ‘Duration of Current Claim’. A claimant’s main disabling condition being ‘Terminally Ill’ does not necessarily mean they are classed as an SREL claimant. Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required.