The Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has told a cross-party panel of MPs that new claims for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) have reached “record” levels and “never been so high”. However, the knock-on effect of this increase in demand for the disability benefit is a backlog of more than 300,000 people waiting for a health assessment.
A decision on the level of award someone may be entitled to receive is mostly determined by an assessment from an independent health assessor. Between January and April 2022, some 236,180 PIP assessments were conducted remotely over the phone or by video call, 53,330 were paper-based and 14,720 were face-to-face.
During the Work and Pensions Committee hearing on June 29, Labour MP, Steve McCabe, challenged Dr Therese Coffey over the number of people waiting for an assessment. He asked: “Are you at all concerned about the backlog in the PIP assessments these days? I gather it has trebled.”
