Personal Independence Payment (often shortened to ‘PIP’) is a benefit for those who have long-term health conditions or disabilities which affect their day-to-day life and/or mobility. You can claim this whether you are in or out of work and it does not affect any other benefits. This benefit is to help people have a greater independence in their lives and more ability to do daily activities/move around. For example, by paying for support/therapy, or buying equipment to help them.
There are two categories of PIP payment: 1) daily living and 2) mobility. These are paid in different amounts, depending on how impacted your daily life and/or mobility are by your illness or disability.
In order to claim PIP follow the instructions here.
To claim, you first need to call or write to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and ask for a form to fill in (see the above site for details). On this call, you will be asked some basic questions about yourself. You are allowed to ask somebody to be brought into the call to help you to answer questions. You will then be sent a form in the post to fill in. Do get help with filling out this form if you are in any doubt as to what the questions mean. You can get detailed information on how to fill in this form here at Disability Rights UK.
You will be asked how well you perform tasks in the following categories:
(Daily Living) Preparing food; Taking nutrition; Managing therapy or managing a health condition; Washing and bathing; Managing toilet needs or incontinence; Dressing and undressing; Communicating verbally; Reading and understanding signs, symbols, and words; Engaging with other people face to face; Making budget decisions.
(Mobility) Planning and following journeys; Moving around.
You are only considered able to do something if you are able to do it safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly, and in a reasonable time. You are also only considered able to do something if you can do it more than 50% of the time. Bear this in mind when filling out your form.
Send your form off within 28 days of receiving it. If it is going to be late, give the reason why in the additional information box and consider ringing the PIP line to tell them that you will be sending it late and why. Reasonable excuses include that you were not well enough to complete the form, you did not have sufficient support to fill in the form, or there was an emergency/disaster that stopped you from being able to fill in the form.
Always take photocopies or photographs of your answers before sending off the form, so that you can refer back to it.
After the form has been received by the DWP, it is highly likely that you will be called to a face-to-face or phone assessment. At the moment (during covid-19 restrictions) this will be a phone assessment. You are allowed to have somebody else on the phone to support you and if you would like the assessor to bring your support worker or friend into the call to help you, then say this straight away.
For each activity that you cannot do when required, and to a reasonable standard, you will receive a certain number of points. The number of points you are awarded decides how much PIP you will get.
If you disagree with the decision about how much (if any) PIP you get, you can appeal. See how to appeal here.
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