Official Statistics

Personal Independence Payment statistics release strategy

Updated 17 December 2024

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Introduction

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) publishes Accredited Official Statistics about the number of claims to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and this document explains our strategy to improve these statistics.

From 8 April 2013, DWP started to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for people aged 16 to 64 with PIP. PIP helps towards some of the extra costs caused by long-term disability, ill-health or terminal ill-health and is based on how a person’s condition affects them, not the condition they have. It is not means tested or subject to tax and it is payable to people who are both in and out of work.

From March 2022, Scottish Government began to replace PIP with Adult Disability Payment (ADP). New claimants apply for ADP rather than PIP after specific dates depending on which Scottish Local Authority they live in, with roll out complete for the whole of Scotland from 29 August 2022 and existing PIP claimants starting to transfer to ADP from Summer 2022. While Official PIP Statistics will continue to be produced and published for all claims administered by DWP, from September 2022 the release bulletin focusses on claims in England & Wales (plus abroad or unknown cases) with a separate section of commentary covering Scotland to reflect impact of Scottish devolution.

Read more about PIP.

Through releasing statistics, our aim is to place in the public domain the information that we are likely to receive regular requests through parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information Requests, or that the department may want to use publicly, such as at Public Accounts Committee or select committee hearings.

Background

Statistics are sourced from the PIP Atomic Data Store, which contains data from the administrative PIP Computer System. Checks are undertaken to ensure it is quality assured and meaningful ahead of publication in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

The quarterly release is used to present information on both new PIP claims and DLA claims undergoing reassessment to PIP within Great Britain. It provides statistics on both new PIP claims and DLA claims undergoing reassessment to PIP within Great Britain, with information on:

• PIP registrations
• PIP clearances
• PIP awards
• PIP clearance and outstanding times
• PIP mandatory reconsideration (MR) registrations (where a claimant requests DWP to reconsider the decision), clearance volumes by sub-type and average MR clearance times
• PIP customer journey statistics tracking initial decisions and award review outcomes following a PIP assessment through to mandatory reconsideration and appeal
• the number of claimants entitled to PIP at a point in time
• award reviews and changes of circumstance

In addition, DLA to PIP reassessment statistics are published annually in December of each year.

Many statistics on PIP are published on a tabulation tool called Stat-Xplore, which allows users to produce their own bespoke tables and visualisations so that the figures may be viewed in tables, graphs, and maps.

Summary PIP data are also released in the statistical release and as standalone Excel-based tables.

Overview of changes to our published statistics

The PIP collection of statistics continues to be updated on a quarterly basis, introducing new statistics to the publication over time.

Each release of these statistics is pre-announced in line with Office for Statistics Regulation release protocols.

Date	Explanation of change	Frequency
5 June 2014	Official statistics on the PIP caseload (cases in payment), number of registrations, clearances and awards, were first published.	Quarterly
18 March 2015	Statistics on average clearances times and outstanding times first published.	Quarterly
17 June 2015	Statistics on MR registrations (where a claimant requests DWP to reconsider the decision) and clearance volumes by sub-type.	Quarterly
14 December 2016	First published DLA reassessment to PIP outcomes.	Annual
11 September 2018	Further breakdown of pre-assessment disallowance volumes on Stat-Xplore by whether the claimant failed to attend their assessment or failed to return their ‘How your disability affects you?’ (PIP2) form.	Quarterly
11 September 2018	New lower-level geographical breakdowns in the statistical datasets on Stat-Xplore to include Lower Layer Super Output Area and Middle Layer Super Output Area. The methodology was improved with residency based geographies derived from address information as recorded on the Customer Information System (CIS). CIS is a more reliable source of addresses as it links to all of the DWP benefit systems and contains the most up to date address for each individual. Geographies are now based on 2011 Census Output Areas (COAs).	Quarterly
11 December 2018	Clearance type volumes (that is whether the award was awarded or disallowed) were broken down by main disabling condition on Stat-Xplore.	Quarterly
11 December 2018	Experimental statistics on award review and change of circumstance registrations and clearance volumes by award amount change.	Annual
11 June 2019	Combining the clearance and disallowance indicators into one clearance type indicator on Stat-Xplore.	Quarterly
11 June 2019	Experimental statistics on average clearance times for MR decisions.	Quarterly
12 September 2019	Experimental ‘cohort’ statistics tracking initial PIP decisions through to MR and appeal.	Quarterly
12 September 2019	MR registrations and clearances published on Stat-Xplore rather than Excel tables, allowing users to filter MR data by geographical area (local authority and parliamentary constituency), reassessment indicator, terminally ill indicator, disabling condition, age and gender.	Quarterly
13 December 2019	PIP award types and review periods for initial decision outcomes where the decision was to award PIP, in the Clearance tables on Stat-Xplore.	Quarterly
13 December 2019	DLA reassessment to PIP outcomes published on Stat-Xplore rather than Excel tables – allowing users to produce their own data tables by month, geography, DLA disabling condition, age and gender.	Quarterly
11 June 2020	PIP award review and change of circumstance registration and clearance statistics updated on a quarterly basis rather than annually.	Quarterly
11 June 2020	New measure added to clearance and cases with entitlement (caseload) datasets so that users can tabulate average amounts of money received as a PIP award (mean financial award).	Quarterly
11 June 2020	Breakdown added to all Stat-Xplore datasets to show whether a customer is of State Pension Age or not.	Quarterly
15 December 2020	Extension of the DLA reassessment to PIP outcomes statistics to include outcomes for child DLA claimants reaching age 16 and applying to PIP (known as “Rising 16” claimants)	Annual
15 June 2021	Introduction of “Coronavirus COVID-19” in all low level disability breakdowns in all quarterly published series which offer this level of detail. These cases will all be “long COVID” or “post-COVID syndrome” cases rather than initial COVID-19 infections. Any individuals with long COVID-19 as their primary reason for claiming PIP prior to March 2021 will remain classified according to the main disabling condition identified at the time (for example, respiratory illness, fatigue).	Quarterly
14 September 2021	Change to PIP Cases with Entitlement series, to show disability as recorded at caseload date instead of at on-flow date.	Quarterly
14 December 2021	Award Review (AR) statistics published on Stat-Xplore rather than Excel tables, allowing users to filter AR registrations and clearances by: intervention type (planned award review or change of circumstance), geography (region, local authority and parliamentary constituency and for Stat-Xplore, Middle & Lower layer Super Output Area and Census Output Area), assessment status (DLA reassessment indicator),claimant characteristics (age, gender, State Pension Age), primary disability category / sub category / low level disability category, review outcome, pre & post review mobility component and daily living component award levels.	Quarterly
14 December 2021	Extension of Single Year age breakdowns across all PIP tables on Stat-Xplore to age 89.	Quarterly
14 December 2021	Labelling of reassessment type in Stat-Xplore amended to “DLA Reassessment” and “New Claim” (no change has been made to the underlying definition or methodology).	Quarterly
14 December 2021	“Coronavirus COVID-19” added to low level disability breakdowns for Annual “DLA to PIP Reassessment” and “Child DLA to PIP Reassessment” series.	Annual
15 March 2022	The National Tables that accompany this publication have been significantly re-formatted in order to conform to the latest Government Statistical Service (GSS) guidelines on releasing statistics in spreadsheets.	Quarterly
13 September 2022	Changes introduced to reflect the change in Scotland from PIP to Adult Disability Payment. Commentary in the release bulletin focussing on statistics for England & Wales, with a new separate section covering Scotland. New high level geography breakdown has been added to Stat-Xplore allowing users to easily select people with “DWP policy ownership” (England, Wales, plus abroad/unknown cases) or “Policy devolved to Scotland” (those residing in Scotland but with their PIP claim still administered by DWP). Static tables published as ODS/Excel files have been split to give an England & Wales version and a Scotland version.	Quarterly
14 March 2023	Cessation of updates for clearance and outstanding times in median weeks for Scottish tables since the distribution of clearance times for any residual claims in Scotland is not representative of the usual customer journey and so results could be misleading.	Quarterly
14 March 2023	Extension of geographic detail available on Stat-Xplore to include wards.	Quarterly
19 September 2023	Extension of Experimental Customer Journey Statistics to include decisions following an award review – tracking these decisions through to Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) and appeal. This includes planned Award Reviews and those arising from a Change of Circumstance.	Quarterly
19 December 2023	Cessation of remaining Scottish tables (MR clearance times and Customer Journey Statistics) since Scottish activity volumes have decreased to low levels and results for any remaining residual claims could be misleading.	Quarterly
19 December 2023	Extension of Annual DLA to PIP Reassessment statistics to include second and subsequent attempts to claim PIP following a DLA claim, rather than just the first attempt as in the previous update (December 2022). This includes a count of the number of attempts, the outcomes of both the first and latest attempts, and the time elapsed between first and latest attempts.	Annual
12 November 2024	Split of PIP Cases with Entitlement series giving a dataset containing time points up to and including December 2018, and a second dataset containing time points from January 2019 to latest available month. The historic series (labelled “to 2019”) will not be refreshed retrospectively in future releases.	Quarterly
17 December 2024	The PIP statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) to meet the highest standard of Trustworthiness, Quality and Value to become Accredited Official Statistics. The OSR formally confirmed the assessment in September 2024 and the statistics have been re-badged as such from the December 2024 release onwards.	Quarterly

Related statistics

The Scottish Government have produced their own publication for PIP in Scotland. They also publish statistics on benefits for carers and disability assistance which includes Adult Disability Payment, the Scottish benefit replacing PIP.

Ministry of Justice tribunals statistics.

Statistics for Employment and Support Allowance Work Capability Assessment Outcomes.

An ad hoc statistical release has been published to provide transparency on the latest volumes of people receiving combinations of health and disability benefits.

Work and Pensions Select Committee PIP and ESA assessments inquiry: supporting statistics. This ad hoc publication gives statistics about the assessment process from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the 3 assessment providers:

• Centre for Health and Disability Assessments (CHDA)
• Capita
• Independent Assessment Services (IAS)

The release also includes statistics about the outcomes of MRs and tribunals.

Statistics for Health Transformation Programme management information:

• Management Information (MI) has been published following a commitment in the Health Transformation Programme (HTP) Evaluation Strategy to publish metrics on the Health Transformation Programme. This is the first HTP MI release of an ongoing quarterly series which will align with the timings of the Personal Independence Payment Official Statistics
• this edition of the HTP MI publication provides information on volumes of referrals for Health Transformation Area assessments and PIP application submissions made through the GOV.UK apply online service

Future releases

Details of further additions to the range of official statistics on PIP will be announced here ahead of publication. In particular, clearance and outstanding times will be moved on to Stat-Xplore rather than publishing as Excel tables at a future date.

Further information

If you have any views on the type of statistics you would like to see available on PIP or comments on the publication strategy, email [email protected].