To be delighted PIP assessments are to be face to face?

Do you prefer this? The increase in PIP claims is often mischaracterised as a result of “laziness,” but the data tells a very different story. As of July 2025, around 3.8 million people in England and Wales were receiving PIP, yet only about 43% of first-time applications are successful, showing that most claims are carefully assessed and not automatic. The majority of successful claimants have genuine health needs, with psychiatric disorders accounting for 39% of awards and musculoskeletal conditions 19%. Rising PIP numbers are better explained by greater awareness of the benefit, an aging population, improved recognition of hidden disabilities, and periodic government adjustments, rather than anything else.

They would only have to observe my oldest son from afar to see how autistic he is

Or perhaps the poster thinks that aeroplanes miraculously cure incontinence ?

This. If the promised overhaul of the assessment and award process actually went ahead and concentrated on being fair to the claimant instead of denying benefit for any reason they can find, perhaps we could save tax payers money. Appeals cost a fortune and over 70% of those who go to tribunal win. Doesn’t that indicate that something is very wrong somewhere ? DWP have been repeatedly criticised by tribunal judges for the quality of their decision making, and for flouting their own rules and guidelines, but little changes, and when it does, the change is concentrated on making things more difficult for the claimant instead of fixing a system that has been well and truly broken for some time.

It may vary but there is no way pip is being given out without medical evidence and just the say so of the claimant

I was answering a question that had been asked further up the thread.

If she's capable of her own personal hygiene, why would it stop her from taking a 12 hour flight?

To be fair, I think a lot depends on the severity and rigour of the assessor, and on which job centre is local to you. Of course it’s supposed to be a standardised assessment nationwide but it’s going to vary.

These disabled/PIP/UC bashing threads certainly highlight why woman are not always taken seriously, cant compete with men and are labelled neurotic and over emotional. Not an ounce of lateral thinking between them

100% this my pip assessor had never heard of my condition and then had the absolute cheek to argue against what my specialists had written. Its like needing a wisdom tooth taking out and going to a cardiologist to do it. It makes no sense

Anyone want to join me on the thread I’m going to start celebrating my disabled DD? I’ll try hard not to be overly sarcastic

I KNOW, THAT'S FAIR, BUT YOUR ABELIST VIEWS REALLY ANNOY ME

Face to face appointments have been taking place anyway. They were suspended during Covid and have gradually been reintroduced over the last couple of years. There are some circumstances where face to face isn’t appropriate. For example where a claimant has provided broadly sufficient paper evidence to enable a decision but the assessor just needs to clear up a couple of points. A phone or video call will usually suffice and is a lot cheaper than a full face to face interview from an independent company, to which these assessments have been outsourced, and for which the tax payer foots the bill.

And where a claimant is so severely disabled that they cannot attend an assessment centre, again, if paper evidence broadly supports the claim, there are two choices - a phone call to check facts, or the assessor can choose the more expensive route to visit the claimant at home, and the tax payer foots the bill.

Other methods have their place and the government are being disingenuous by suggesting that face to face appointments don’t happen. Perhaps this is because despite promising a root and branch reform to make an opaque and unfair assessment and decision making process fairer and clearer, the government have decided to take the easy route and tinker around the edges - exactly as their predecessors did.

Face to face assessments should be the norm in most cases, but it should also be the norm that disabled people don’t have to travel for an hour or more to get to their nearest assessment centre. Or arrive at the centre only to find that they haven’t been advised there is no wheelchair access, or there are stairs they can’t manage, no access to suitable toilet facilities and more. Many claimants have faced benefit being suspended or withdrawn after wrongly being recorded as ‘failed to attends’ in these circumstances.

The average non disabled person has little or no experience of the system, or of how unfair it is, but it doesn’t stop them rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of those whose lives are already difficult, being made even more so.

I’m not 100% sure about the disability element of her benefits but think it has something to do with incontinence (which isn’t enough of a bother to take a 12 hour flight, unaccompanied.)

So you're an... immigrant? How do you feel about that? That's probably a different topic, eh

Pip is technically in 4 parts. Low and high rate daily living and low and high rate mobility only about 30% of people are on high rate for both. Not being able to leave the house is just one of the questions the majority of people will be able to leave the house. I can leave the house and I claim pip. I leave the house to go to work

No, I'm saying his farfetched tales of knowing someone of screwing the system are nonsense

Well if the government really wants to save some money on PIP they could start by making sure that the assessors are suitably qualified. I am DD's appointee for benefits and when I had to apply for PIP for her when she turned 16 I supplied loads of medical and other evidence and took ages filling in the form. That in itself was a truly depressing thing to do. The assessor phoned me and said she would call back in an hour when she had looked at the documents.

When she called back she quite clearly hadn't looked at it in any detail. She asked if DD would be doing O Levels. This is a child who has no concept of time, counts on her fingers, has no idea of the value of money, struggles to understand the difference between actors on TV and real people and who still watches CBeebies.

She also had no idea what DD's neurological condition actually was so I had to explain it to her.

Perhaps if the assessors actually read the applications properly and had some knowledge of medical conditions there wouldn't be so many mandatory reconsiderations and appeals. The DWP often holds out until the last minute and then settles just before a tribunal hearing.

I agree that there should be proper assessments but if an assessor does not know what they are doing then whether it is on the phone or F2F makes not a jot of difference.

It's people like you that are the problem. How do you think we are going to be able to afford the uncontrollable rise in PIP in the coming years? I'm emigrating, so I guess you'll have to pay more tax to make up for loss of the many thousands DH and I pay. Enjoy! I'll be watching the UK implode from afar.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THEM!

So your implying he lied about going on holiday and getting car, and is in fact still in his bedroom? That feels like an odder thing to brag about.....

Agree, but what this has shown me is loads of people actually don't hate the disabled and read actual stats and know that these fairytale stories of "my nephew said that, his friend said..." are nonsense.

Where is the news story? I can’t seem to find it. Starting to wish I hadn’t wasted my energy posting on here before checking. And the OP dumped and ran. Another clarion call to those who love to criticise the disabled. Bollocks to that.

Not if, in order to be awarded PIP, you've said you can't leave the house.

You said i bet some of these mumsnetters arguing against this are themselves on the fiddle. The reason we argue about this is because we know how hard the pip process is and everytime there is a thread about disability benefits suddenly everyone know all these random peoples full finances and medical histories and how easy it is to get pip and how people don't even need medical evidence and can just tell the dwp they are disabled and they just get given money. Anyone who has actually been through the pip process and understands how much medical evidence is needed and how much you have to fight on top of that to prove how every tiny bit of that medical evidence effects you knows how much bullshit is written on these threads and how gullible people will read it and believe it and use it as a reason to hate disabled people. These threads are daily its so hard being disabled its scary and lonely and knowing the world is against you makes it harder