UK: Disability benefits (UC, ESA and PIP) - news and updates 2024 and 2025

MrMagoo said:
It’s a fudge. It’s ill thought out nonsense.
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Yep -

The review will look at every aspect of the assessment, “including activities, descriptors and associated points – to consider whether these effectively capture the impact of long-term health conditions and disability in the modern world.”

It will also consider whether issues other than the assessment should be taken into account, including “evidence related to an individual’s personal circumstances and environment.” It’s hard to know what this could mean. It could, for example, be anything from whether you live alone to what sort of bathroom you have or how far the nearest bus stop is.
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If the PIP assessment includes a claimant's personal circumstances and environment, then any changes in these would need to be reported as a 'change of circumstance'. This would be patently ridiculous, the system already can't cope and is plagued with a massive backlog. It's unbelievable how these ministers have so little understanding of how the benefit system works when it's supposed to be their specialist area (that is, they are in charge of it...).

Given the timescale they are now talking of regarding the PIP review, there clearly won't be a formal consultation with the public as this would need 12 weeks. So even less engagement than there was with the Green Paper proposed reforms.
 
Simbindi said:
Yep -



If the PIP assessment includes a claimant's personal circumstances and environment, then any changes in these would need to be reported as a 'change of circumstance'. This would be patently ridiculous, the system already can't cope and is plagued with a massive backlog. It's unbelievable how these ministers have so little understanding of how the benefit system works when it's supposed to be their specialist area (that is, they are in charge of it...).

Given the timescale they are now talking of regarding the PIP review, there clearly won't be a formal consultation with the public as this would need 12 weeks. So even less engagement than there was with the Green Paper proposed reforms.
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I think the “kill the bill” phase 1 rebels know this, it’s all going down to the wire on this vote. If it gets defeated it could end Starmer
 
Simbindi said:
If they change the PIP descriptors and the points awarded after Timms' review, then everyone on the 10 year light touch review would need a full reassessment at their review point.
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Yep, if they apply it to all claims.

If they do and there are significant changes to several descriptors, it means everyone on PIP making a full application at review. People might need to be assessed who would otherwise have had a paper review. That would cost a fortune, take years to process, and there'd almost certainly be another set of changes in the offing by the time they'd finished.

They might try to avoid doing that, specially if there's a sizeable bunch of people who'd be likely to receive a similar award under the new descriptors anyway. Applying it to them would be a crazy waste of money and staff resources.

A lot depends on who they've got in their sights, I guess. At one point it seemed to be younger people with mental ill-health, but the 4-point rule shifted the emphasis. It's hard to know when it's not really about PIP at all—it's about saving money, and changing PIP descriptors is easier than tackling industrial-scale tax avoidance and fraud on UC.
 
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