A list of important changes to the decision making process behind Personal Independence Payments (PIP) have been made by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
A full review into the application process for PIP claims has also been denied. Nottinghamshire Live reports that an online petition has received over 12,000 signatures, and triggered a response from the government.
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The review would look into how PIP is delivered, focusing particularly into the role independent assessors play in the application process. Posted onto the petitions-parliament website, the petition surpassed the 10,000 threshold that is needed for a response.
At 100,000 signatures, the petition would have to be considered for debate in Parliament. The DWP gave its response on Wednesday, September 28.
In the response, DWP said: “We are committed to ensuring individuals applying for health and disability benefits receive high quality, robust and accurate assessments and decisions on their claim. We work continuously to improve the quality of service.
“It has always been our aim to make the right decision at the earliest opportunity so that claimants do not have to appeal.
“Consequently, and learning from tribunal decisions, we have introduced a new approach to decision making at both the initial decision and the Mandatory Reconsideration stage, giving Decision Makers additional time to proactively contact claimants where they think additional evidence may support a claim.”
The DWP continued: “The new approach to decision making has resulted in a greater proportion of decisions being changed at Mandatory Reconsideration, which in turn has contributed to a reduction in the proportion of decisions resulting in an appeal lodgement.
“Only 7% of initial decisions made in 2020-21 have seen an appeal lodged against them, compared to 9% in 2019-20, and 10% in the three years previous. In addition, since PIP was introduced 4.5 million initial decisions following an assessment have been made up to March 2022; 9% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned at a tribunal hearing.”
In 2021, the DWP published Shaping Future Support: The Health and Disability Green Paper. This report explored how the welfare system could meet the needs of disabled people better, and work with them to build a system that enables people to live independently and move into work where possible.
The White Paper will be published later this year. Read on below to learn more about the DWP's response.
Specifically addressing the points in the petition regarding assessment providers, DWP said: “Both PIP assessment providers, Capita and Independent Assessment Services (IAS), strive to provide excellent service to claimants and are held to account for their performance.
“They have consistently exceeded their customer satisfaction targets of 90% for PIP, achieving collectively 96.6% until the end of February 2022.”
The DWP also said that as part of the Functional Health Assessment process, the “feasibility of a paper-based assessment will always be considered in the first instance for all cases”.
So claimants, GPs, or any named specialist medical professionals can be contacted by the Health Professional if they need more information to complete a paper-based review. The DWP added: "Health Professionals are expected to consider all available evidence when formulating their advice.”
The DWP noted that all evidence must:
- be interpreted and evaluated using medical reasoning
- consider the circumstances of the case
- consider the expected impact on the claimant’s daily living and/or mobility
DWP said that providers are working continuously to drive improvements in assessment services. It explained: “They have introduced new management processes to drive performance across their services, including enhanced assessment report quality checks to improve the quality of advice the DWP receives.”
Provider performance is measured across a range of service level agreements, which sets out the department's expectations for service delivery. These include quality and performance delivery targets.
The DWP also said that PIP Case Managers receive extensive training and are supported and coached by an experienced mentor before passing rigorous Line Manager checks to ensure they have reached the high standard that it expects.
They added: "As a learning organisation, the Department is continually supporting Case Managers to develop their understanding of the functional needs arising from complex health conditions and disabilities to ensure that robust decisions are reached weighting all of the claimant’s evidence, health professional advice and all supporting evidence.”
All petitions run for 6 months. This petition will remain open until Wednesday, February 15, 2023, and can be viewed online along with the full DWP response.
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