Personal Independence Payment statistics to April 2022
Quarterly statistics including numbers of claims with entitlement, new claim registrations, decisions and awards made.
Applies to England, Scotland and Wales
Documents
Details
The latest release of these statistics can be found in the collection of Personal Independence Payment statistics.
These official statistics include data up to 30 April 2022 for:
- caseloads (cases with entitlement)
- registrations
- clearances and awards, including award types and review periods
- award reviews and changes of circumstance
- mandatory reconsiderations
- average clearance times and average outstanding times
- mandatory reconsideration clearance times
- customer journey statistics (experimental) tracking initial decisions following a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessment through to mandatory reconsideration and appeal
Changes in this release
Restructure of the release bulletin
From the June 2022 release, a new section to this bulletin has been introduced focussing on differences between different disability groupings, and this will be updated on an annual basis. Underlying figures in Stat-Xplore will continue to be updated quarterly so users interested in specific disability groupings can find the figures there as they do now. This change reduces the amount of content which shows little change from one quarter to the next, while retaining a detailed view of the subject area. Each quarter’s release will contain a link to the publication that contained the most recent update for this section.
In addition, section 6 of the previous release, which looks at detailed breakdowns of Clearance outcomes by Award Type and Review Period, has been removed and instead included in section 4: Clearance Outcomes – Awards.
Status of award type and review period statistics
In December 2019, breakdowns for Clearance tables in Stat-Xplore were introduced to show award types and review periods for initial decision outcomes. These were badged as experimental to reflect the fact that the breakdowns were new and methodologies and definitions for the statistics could develop over time. In the intervening period, there have not been any changes to methodology and from June 2022 the statistics are badged as Official Statistics in line with the rest of the PIP clearance measures.
Special Rules
There have been changes around the terminology used for people making a claim to PIP because they are approaching the end of their life due to a progressive disease.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has provided support to people nearing the end of their life through the Special Rules for Terminal Illness since 1990. A recent evaluation has shown that the clinical community has moved away from using ‘terminal illness’ and has instead adopted phrases like ‘End of Life’.
Current ‘Special Rules’ for PIP apply to people who are likely to have 6 months or less to live. These rules ensure claims are dealt with quickly and sensitively. DWP is changing the current 6-month Special Rules criteria to a model which considers whether an individual is likely to be in their final year of life, that is with a 12-month time-frame.
In future, Special Rules will apply to people who have 12 months or less to live, and DWP are currently taking forward the necessary legislative change for PIP in Parliament (Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Bill [HL] – Parliamentary Bills – UK Parliament) with the change due to take effect following Royal Assent.
For more detail on the Special Rules, see The ‘Special Rules’: how the benefit system supports people nearing the end of life.
PIP Official Statistics formerly referred to Special Rules for Terminal Illness (SRTI) but from June 2022 have been updated to use the term Special Rules for End of Life (SREL) instead. This change has been made for all commentary, tables, and Stat-Xplore, with footnotes added to explain the amendment.
Scotland
From 21 March 2022, people living in 3 Local Authorities in Scotland (Dundee City, Perth and Kinross or the Western Isles (Na h-Eileanan Siar)) now make new claims to Adult Disability Payment, administered by the Scottish Government, instead of making new claims to PIP.
The impact of this change is limited at this stage, affecting only 6 weeks of data for a group of Local Authorities which collectively averaged only 360 PIP registrations per month over the year to February 2022. Other PIP measures will not show any impact by April 2022 given the usual length of the PIP customer journey.
The impact of this change will grow over future months and a different approach for PIP Statistics in Scotland will be taken from the September 2022 release onwards.
Expected changes in future releases
From the September 2022 release onwards, the following changes are proposed to reflect the change in Scotland from PIP to Adult Disability Payment as detailed in the “Personal Independence Payment in Scotland” section above:
- commentary in the main body of this release will focus on statistics for England and Wales, with a separate section covering Scotland
- Stat-Xplore will continue to hold figures for Scotland alongside England and Wales. Footnotes will be added to alert users to the changes in Scotland
- static data tables published as ODS/Excel files will be split to give an England and Wales version and a Scotland version
This approach allows users to access statistics for all PIP cases administered by DWP, but focuses commentary on trends affecting cases in England and Wales, while also showing the depleting caseload in Scotland.
We are keen to receive feedback about these changes. Please contact us with your comments by 26 July 2022.
Feedback and queries
If you have any queries or feedback about existing PIP Official Statistics, or the changes proposed above, please email [email protected]