Claimants suffer hardship

Urgent government action is needed to address problems in the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) system, according to the campaigning charity, Disability Rights UK.

Figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions in June showed that around 75% of claimants were still awaiting a decision. Of 349,000 new PIP claims made since the introduction of the new system in April 2013, only 84,900 had received decisions in the first 12 months.

Excluding those who are terminally ill, over 50% of those disabled people who had actually received a decision had not been granted any award at all.

Disability Rights UK has demanded an “end to the further roll-out of PIP” and urgent action “to reduce the scandalous backlog of PIP claims” responsible for “causing financial hardship, despair and frustration to nearly 300,000 disabled people”.

Kate Green, Labour’s shadow disability minister, commented that if the current rate of assessments were to continue, it would take “a staggering 42 years” to assess all claims.

PIP was introduced to replace the Disability Living Allowance. Assessments for claims in central England, Wales and Northern Ireland are carried out by Capita. Atos — which lost the contract to carry out work capability assessments earlier this year — undertakes the PIP assessments in Scotland and the rest of England.

A report by the House of Commons work and pensions select committee in March criticised the level of service offered to PIP claimants.

www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2014/june/pip-stats-show-broken-system

http://press.labour.org.uk/post/87885955089/figures-prove-camerons-shambolic-introduction-of