Personal Independence Payment

(asked on 26th June 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the implications of the High Court ruling of June 2015 relating to delays in payment of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for his plans for implementing PIP.


Answered by
Justin Tomlinson Portrait
Justin Tomlinson
This question was answered on 1st July 2015

The Court rejected two of the three legal grounds brought by the claimants, finding that their human rights had not been breached and not awarding damages.

Where the Court found that the historic delay for the two claimants was unlawful, they also ruled that they are not “test cases” and it would be inappropriate to make wider findings.

The Court accepted that the Government had made significant improvements to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) process and there are now no inherent failings in the system.

As a result of these improvements, the average time taken for a claimant to be assessed by an assessment provider has fallen by more than three quarters since June 2014. In April 2015, the average reassessment claimant was waiting four weeks for their PIP assessment – well within the 16 week target set by the Secretary of State.

As I announced in a written statement, Official Report 25 June 2015, column. 33WS to 34WS, this improved performance means we now intend to roll out the final phase of this vital reform from July, that of the reassessment of all remaining people on Disability Living Allowance for PIP. We are doing that in a controlled way – initially for small volumes of claimants with long-term or indefinite awards and in a limited number of areas.

Reticulating Splines