UK: Disability benefits (UC, ESA and PIP) - news and updates 2026

Benefits & Work Newsletter

FEWER PIP REVIEWS, MORE WCA REASSESSMENTS, MORE FACE-TO-FACE

From April 2026, the time between PIP reviews is to be extended for the majority of claimants aged 25 and over, to a minimum of three years for a new claim, rising to 5 years at their next review.

The reduced numbers will allow assessment providers to increase the proportion of face-to-face, rather than telephone, reviews they carry out.

For PIP, the proportion will rise from 6% at present to 30%.

For WCAs, it will rise from 13% to 30%.

This is likely to reduce the number of awards. In 2024, the success rate for face-to-face PIP assessments was 44% compared to 57% for virtual assessments.

The change is also intended to allow more WCA reassessments to be carried out from April.

PIP PLANNED REVIEW NUMBERS DOUBLE, SUCCESS RATES FALL

The number of PIP planned reviews carried out in the most recent quarter has almost doubled compared to last year, the latest DWP statistics show, but success rates for both reviews and fresh claims have fallen.

Planned PIP review numbers are up by 96% as the DWP tries to cut the enormous backlog.

But at the same time, the success rate for new claims has fallen from 44% to 38% in the course of a year.

And whilst the percentage of awards that were decreased or disallowed after a planned review remains very similar, there was a big drop in the percentage of awards that were increased. It was down from 24% last year to 14% this year.

So, DWP seem to have succeeded in making PIP planned award reviews virtually financially neutral: three quarters of awards stay the same and almost the same proportion of claimants have their award decreased or disallowed as have it increased.

No wonder then, that the DWP are now willing to increase the time between reviews – they no longer have anything to lose.

 
I'm applying for ESA and the Jobcentre insists on monthly in-person visits until I get a WCA. They also need to confirm my ID, but I'm largely bedbound.

I've spoken to them multiple times and they cannot do home visits or phone appointments. I'm waiting for a doctor's letter, but I'm not even sure what my GP will write as they all think mecfs is fatigue, not PEM. I could probably do an in-person visit with a private ambulance an wheelchair service which is around £300 for each appointment according to AI. That's nearly as much as the benefits I'm applying for.

What's the best way to insist they need to make reasonable adjustments? So far I'm planning to send the doctor's letter via post, but they've already messed up scheduling appointments and never seem to have my file open so I assume they will never receive it. Calling is not an option as I need written documentation of my communication with them or they'll pretend it didn't happen.
 
OrganicChilli said:
I'm applying for ESA and the Jobcentre insists on monthly in-person visits until I get a WCA. They also need to confirm my ID, but I'm largely bedbound.

I've spoken to them multiple times and they cannot do home visits or phone appointments. I'm waiting for a doctor's letter, but I'm not even sure what my GP will write as they all think mecfs is fatigue, not PEM. I could probably do an in-person visit with a private ambulance an wheelchair service which is around £300 for each appointment according to AI. That's nearly as much as the benefits I'm applying for.

What's the best way to insist they need to make reasonable adjustments? So far I'm planning to send the doctor's letter via post, but they've already messed up scheduling appointments and never seem to have my file open so I assume they will never receive it. Calling is not an option as I need written documentation of my communication with them or they'll pretend it didn't happen.
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Are you by any chance registered as housebound in the NHS system? I hope your GP writes you're housebound regardless.

I don't have any experience with ESA and Jobcentre but I'm wondering if they could keep arguing against that.
 
OrganicChilli said:
I'm not sure. Is that somewhere in the NHS app? I've mentioned it to them in summer and the GP wrote that I prefer phone appointments because of fatigue (sigh)
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I've never used the app. I can log in to my account at https://systmonline.tpp-uk.com/
I can see in my records that one day they added a coded entry 13CA for housebound and also wrote the diagnosis as a reason.
 
The usual way is to make a formal request by letter.

You need to explain how you're disabled, what adjustments you need, and how you would be disadvantaged if you weren't offered those adjustments. I did this at work, and was advised to use that format by my union. Under the first heading, I explain how I was disabled under the Equality Act.

The letter doesn't need to be long, and in the description of your impairment it's best to focus on the effects of ME/CFS rather than the diagnosis itself. That's the basis on which disability benefits are assessed, and when it comes to little-understood conditions like ours, it's quite helpful for it to be that way around.

You can use the £300-per-visit issue as one of ways in which you'd be disadvantaged. For someone with severe ME/CFS, the impact on your health of having to visit a Jobcentre is far more of an issue, but it's hard to communicate. The cost really stands out as an unreasonable burden on a claimant.

I always send things by Special Delivery, which is expensive but you do at least have proof that they've received it. If you pay for the postage by Click & Drop (Royal Mail website) the letter can be collected from your home, you don't need to find someone to post it.

I'm sorry you're having to go through this.
 
Bit of good news for people on means tested benefits:

Around six million low-income households will continue to receive £150 off their winter energy bills after the government confirmed its Warm Home Discount will remain for five more years.
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www.bbc.co.uk

Millions to get £150 off energy bills for further five years

The government has confirmed the discount for six million low-income households will continue for the rest of the decade.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk

Qualification should be automatic as long as you're entitled to one of the benefits and are with the same energy supplier when the discount is applied (usually between October and December) as you were on the "qualifying date" (usually in the summer—it was 24 August last year, but I think it might have been July in previous years).

So if anyone qualifies but is looking to change supplier, it might be best to do it between now and June. The person who receives the benefit needs to be the one named on the electricity bill.
 

DWP disability PIP assessors quit in droves over being 'despised' and 'de-skilled'​

Health professionals responsible for evaluating individuals for disability benefits are abandoning the sector en masse due to feelings of being ‘despised’ and ‘de-skilled’, research from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has confirmed.

In a recently-published report, the department reveals that more than half (52 per cent) of its health assessors departed in a single year, with 40 per cent of new hires quitting during the three-month training programme.
The study, which examines assessors for both the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and the health-related component of Universal Credit, was conducted in Spring 2022, with conclusions drawn from 2021 data.

Both evaluations have long faced criticism from disability rights advocates as challenging and unreliable procedures. According to surveys by disability charity Sense, more than half (51 per cent) of disabled people with complex requirements report feeling humiliated by their PIP assessment.

A further 45 per cent stated the process worsened their symptoms. Assessors must be qualified healthcare practitioners. One informed researchers: “We all got in healthcare for altruistic reasons and that maybe isn’t the case in this job... you’re a cog in the machine doing bureaucratic work.”
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One informed researchers: “We all got in healthcare for altruistic reasons and that maybe isn’t the case in this job... you’re a cog in the machine doing bureaucratic work.”
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I suspect they're also trained to minimise pain and disability in a way that wouldn't have occurred to them when seeing patients in a clinic or looking after them in an ambulance. And to make the most of people failing to give the 'right' answers due to inexperience or lack of knowledge, even if they can see they have significant needs.

That's got to be pretty depressing, even if the pay rate's better than working shifts in a hospital.
 
Kitty said:
I suspect they're also trained to minimise pain and disability in a way that wouldn't have occurred to them when seeing patients in a clinic or looking after them in an ambulance. And to make the most of people failing to give the 'right' answers due to inexperience or lack of knowledge, even if they can see they have significant needs.

That's got to be pretty depressing, even if the pay rate's better than working shifts in a hospital.
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Moral distress in the workplace, can lead to PTSD.
Very common in the modern NHS
 
MrMagoo said:
Moral distress in the workplace, can lead to PTSD.
Very common in the modern NHS
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Absolutely. I recently read (listened to) a book called trauma stewardship which described how working in a ‘doing good’ role can change the way you think and act, with examples from healthcare, social care, humanitarianism, charity work, commissioning etc., and described how people ‘protect’ themselves mentally.
 
Haveyoutriedyoga said:
Absolutely. I recently read (listened to) a book called trauma stewardship which described how working in a ‘doing good’ role can change the way you think and act, with examples from healthcare, social care, humanitarianism, charity work, commissioning etc., and described how people ‘protect’ themselves mentally.
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That’s a slightly different thing.
Moral distress or injury is where you go into a role to do “good” and help people, but in the role you’re prevented from doing good, in fact you’re doing bad.
So if you become a PiP assessor to help the “genuinely” disabled but actually you have to see 20 people and write 20 reports per day then you can’t see them properly or do a decent report. You can’t do a decent report for one of the 20, and all of the 20 seemed genuine, not trying it on. The system is forcing you to do a bad job and that causes tough consequences for the claimants.
 
MrMagoo said:
That’s a slightly different thing.
Moral distress or injury is where you go into a role to do “good” and help people, but in the role you’re prevented from doing good, in fact you’re doing bad.
So if you become a PiP assessor to help the “genuinely” disabled but actually you have to see 20 people and write 20 reports per day then you can’t see them properly or do a decent report. You can’t do a decent report for one of the 20, and all of the 20 seemed genuine, not trying it on. The system is forcing you to do a bad job and that causes tough consequences for the claimants.
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Yes that was covered in the book
 
Kitty said:
I suspect they're also trained to minimise pain and disability in a way that wouldn't have occurred to them when seeing patients in a clinic or looking after them in an ambulance. And to make the most of people failing to give the 'right' answers due to inexperience or lack of knowledge, even if they can see they have significant needs.

That's got to be pretty depressing, even if the pay rate's better than working shifts in a hospital.
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I'm not sure it's a genuine explanation, it rings fake to me. The people who work on junk rehabilitation pseudoscience seem to enjoy their work, in fact insist on continuing and expanding it, despite the fact that they don't actually help anyone, and in fact overall cause massive harm. They're oblivious to it for the most part, but they still face this reality every single day, as much as anyone working at some place like the DWP.

The cog in the machine part, sure, but the "this is not what we signed up for" rings extremely hollow when all it takes is a bunch of bullshit coating to turn frowns upside down. No one is more of a tool in a soul-sucking machine than the people who run all the junk clinics and trials used to hold us captive. They can be aware of how much harm they're doing, but surely not more or less than someone who also works for bureaucracies meant to deny people support, but does a different part of it. That this sentence still works if the groups are swapped says it all.

They probably hate the work conditions, the actual time spent at work, more than what it means in the grand scheme of things. It's an awful desk job facing a computer spent doing mindless droning unrewarding work, it has no variety, no challenge and no meaning. Those jobs tend to be the most hated out there, and yet lots of people do them, even when they largely consist of exploitation or fraud. This idea that medicine is some special "grand purpose" thing is a bunch of crap. It's just a job, lots of people in other professions do their job for similar purposes, yet the reality of most jobs is usually soul-sucking. It's also quite common in law, where grand ideals quickly cede ground to the fact of spending hours litigating some rich asshole's drunk fender-bender, which is a job someone has to do, because there is plenty of demand for it.
 
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