With every single post, you are demonstrating that you know absolutely nothing about what PIP is intended for, or how it’s assessed. Despite the fact that it’s been explained to you to the point of exhaustion. From your behaviour on this thread and a previous one I’m now beginning to think you’re a troll, because I can’t believe someone would stick to the same warped narrative in the face of so much evidence to the contrary.
Let’s take your points one at a time. Reduced capacity for work is completely irrelevant as it has nothing to do with PIP - and PiP is what this thread is about isn’t it ? It doesn’t assess the ability to work - the assessment criteria for this belong to the work capability assessment and similarly to PIP this assesses how the effects of disability impact on the ability to work - but using a completely different set of activities to assess. I’m not going into detail about how this is achieved because all of the information is there, you only have to google it - suffice to say nothing about the assessment is ‘open ended’ or without specific meaning.
The mobility assessment does not consider the ability to use public transport, or the availability of it. At all. So there is no a question of that particular component of PIP being awarded just because someone prefers not to use public transport. That’s ludicrous.
The cooking test for PIP sets a high bar and like all the criteria looks at whether the claimant can carry out the task safely and to a reasonable standard, in a reasonable time frame - in this case cooking a meal from scratch using fresh ingredients, not takeaways or ready meals, but actually peeling, chopping and cooking fresh ingredients. The assessment assumes they are either standing or sitting at a counter top with all the ingredients and utensils needed placed in front of them. It does not consider the ability to use a conventional oven, only those appliances which are within reaching distance. Again, as with all the other descriptors, PIP also considers whether the claimant is safe whilst carrying out the task, whether they need assistance from someone else, or whether they need special aids or appliances to be able to better carry out the task. It also looks at how long it takes them and the effect that doing the task has on their ability to do other things - for example if a cancer patient would be so tired after cooking a meal in this way that they would be unable to do anything else without resting. It does not, as you so ignorantly suggest, award benefit for people simply because they burn food and have to order a takeaway.
PIP doesn’t assess for the need for adaptive clothing. It assesses the ability to be able to dress upper and lower body in standard clothing, how much help the claimant needs doing it and whether they could use aids or adaptations to help them. The assessors are absolutely not allowed to suggest that the claimant uses, or could use any form of adaptive clothing as an alternative as the criteria are designed to assess how well the claimant manages with normal everyday clothing, and suggesting they can use something specifically designed for disability in this context is discriminatory. And your assertion that sensory disabilities are somehow not deserving of consideration and that claimants would spend the money on silk sheets as the norm is ableist. Not to mention utter bollox.
The assessment for therapies the claimant needs, doesn’t focus on the cost of those therapies or whether NHS provides them. It focuses on any therapy or treatment taking up various periods of time, which the claimant needs to undertake at home, and which is recommended by a healthcare professional. It’s intended to give an idea of the severity of the disability, and therefore an idea of any significant ongoing cost, such as help carrying out the therapy or treatment.
The ability to clean a house is not assessed by PIP. So you can’t claim directly for that. Claimants can use their PIP award to pay a cleaner - the way PIP is paid at the moment, there is no restriction on how the benefit is used.
Same with paying for a gardener. Not assessed for. And your assertion that disabled people should be restricted in the size of garden they are allowed to have is ableist, discriminatory and downright offensive.
The mobility assessment of PIP is paid at two rates. The standard rate is paid to those with milder mobility problems which may be caused by physical or mental health conditions, or a combination of both, who find it difficult to travel unaccompanied or have to use mobility aids to walk, and who would benefit with help towards the cost of getting about. The enhanced rate, and I cannot stress this enough, is only paid to those disabled people who have high levels of need. Those claiming the enhanced rate are the only claimants who can lease a car through motability. They are assessed as having significant difficulty in moving around and the enhanced category includes some of the very most disabling conditions. For these people, the opportunity to lease a car is seen as the cheapest and most practical way of staying mobile and being able to engage in society - including work.
You, and several other posters here have lost sight of the fact that disability benefits do not cover all of the extra cost of disability. The assessment is designed to assess how disabled someone is as they go about their everyday life, and the higher the level of impairment, the higher the assumed cost. It then makes the appropriate contribution towards those costs based on the assessed need.
It’s by no means a perfect system but its design didn’t come about by accident. The government knows that making a contribution towards the extra cost of disability by assessing in this way is the cheapest way of doing things. If we start looking at what things actually cost in terms of living with disability, the real expense faced by disabled people would quickly become evident and it would be much more expensive to target effectively to provide any meaningful support. That’s why a contribution is made, and it’s left up to the claimant to decide how best to spend the money - after all, they are the one with the disability and they know their own needs best. What you’re actually saying is that this autonomy should be taken away because disabled people can’t be trusted not to spend their disability benefits on silk sheets and other luxuries. When you consider the difficulties faced by these people on a daily basis, that attitude is utterly abhorrent and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I’ve reported this thread because the ignorance, and ableist and discriminatory comments are not helping anyone. Least of all the OP.