The Department for Work and Pensions has begun trialling a new system for assessing personal independence payment, shifting part of the decision-making burden away from healthcare professionals and onto DWP case managers. The pilot initially covers about 150,000 claimants, or 4 per cent of those who receive the benefit.
That is why claimants, campaigners and MPs are paying attention now. Personal independence payment is the UK's most claimed health and disability-related benefit, worth up to £194.60 a week, and any change in how it is judged can affect whether people keep or lose support. The trial means case managers will still make the final call, but they will do so using information passed on by assessors rather than making the functional judgment themselves.
Under the current system, healthcare professionals such as nurses, paramedics and physiotherapists carry out functional assessments and award points across daily living and mobility categories. The new pilot keeps assessors in the process, but changes where the decision lands, with DWP case managers deciding how to allocate points from the evidence they receive. If the model works, it could be extended to the separate DWP assessment used for the health-related element of universal credit.
That shift is landing while disability minister Sir Stephen Timms is still reviewing PIP, after a threatened backbench rebellion from Labour MPs last July over ministers' plans to cut spending by tweaking eligibility. The government says the review will be co-produced with disabled people, but it has also said it will not revisit changes to the points system until Timms publishes his findings in the autumn. That leaves the new trial running alongside a review that is supposed to answer bigger questions about the benefit's future.
Campaigners have reacted sharply. One anonymous DWP whistleblower said decisions on complex, fluctuating and especially mental health conditions need clinical insight and direct assessment experience, warning that removing health professionals from the decision-making process would strip out essential medical nuance and lead to poorer, less accurate and less fair outcomes. The whistleblower also said many vulnerable claimants would face wrong decisions, more stress, financial hardship and unnecessary appeals.
Fazilet Hadi said the move was “absolutely astonishing” and described the timing as a problem in itself, with the new trial being rolled out while the review is still under way. She said stopping health professionals from making recommendations and requiring them to pass information to DWP case managers was “a recipe for disaster” that would result in thousands of poorly informed and inaccurate decisions. “Claiming PIP is intensely personal,” she said. “We have to talk about the impacts of our impairments and health conditions, in ways many of us find emotionally and practically difficult.”
The immediate question is not whether the trial exists — it does — but whether shifting the point of decision away from assessors changes outcomes for claimants. Ministers will not have to answer that in full until the autumn, when Timms is due to publish his findings. If the trial is expanded beyond PIP, the first test of the new approach may end up shaping another major disability benefit as well.
