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1 day ago
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Long delays in processing personal independence payment (Pip) claims have become one of the most damaging and least defensible failures in the UK’s welfare system. Pip is designed to support disabled people with the additional costs of daily living and mobility, yet for many claimants it has instead become a source of prolonged uncertainty, financial hardship and distress. Waiting months – and in some cases more than a year – for a decision can push people into debt, rent arrears and poverty, especially as Pip unlocks other support such as carer’s allowance.
Parliament has been sounding the alarm over the scale of the problem – but it appears the Department for Work and Pensions has its fingers in its ears. The stock response is that a new “health transformation programme” will lead to efficiency gains made by replacing paper Pip applications with an online claims system. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the public accounts committee, last week pointed out that MPs had been told “three years ago that improvements would have manifested by now; we are now told that they are a further three years off”.
The figures tell the story. The department aims to process 75% of new Pip claims within 75 working days, but, in 2024–25, only 51% of claims were processed within this timeframe. Despite this, the department continues to present long-term digital reform as its primary answer, while offering little reassurance that waiting times will improve meaningfully in the near future. The result is a widening gap between policy intent and lived reality.
For disabled people who rely on Pip to remain financially secure and independent, delay is not a neutral administrative issue – it is pushing them into poverty. Added to that, it is considerably more expensive to live as a disabled person. Charities say that disabled households need to find £625 more each year than non-disabled households just for the basic essentials such as energy bills and transport.
Post-Covid Britain has seen more people with long-term illness, worsening mental health and the numbers of people reporting a disability increasing sharply. The result is more new Pip claims each year, even as the system struggles to process existing ones.
The minister for social security and disability – Sir Stephen Timms – was tasked with undertaking a review of Pip, including the assessment model, and is expected to report this year. But the committee is blunt in telling the government that it cannot allow the review to become another excuse for delay. Reform and speed are not mutually exclusive, and claimants should not have to wait years for basic administrative competence.
The problem that MPs identify is that this fits a broader pattern in three distinct ways. One is that while Pip is legally an entitlement, it looks as if it is being administratively rationed by delay. It is also hard not to feel that digital transformation being is used as a shield against parliamentary accountability. And what is happening is that ministers talk about reform while frontline capacity erodes. Clearly the committee’s patience is running out – and with very good reason. Cynics might suggest it suits ministers not to have to hire extra staff to cope with increased Pip demand while the tech solution comes on stream sometime in the future. The state could fix this. It just refuses to name the problem correctly.
