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

[PAYE]

The only good thing about the budget is that Rachel Reeves announced that face to face assessments for PIP and disability benefits are being brought back. AIBU to think that this is a great thing?

It will make sure that the money goes to those who need it. It is madness that such face to face assessments were ever stopped.

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.)

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 Many claimants have faced benefit being suspended or withdrawn after wrongly being recorded as ‘failed to attends’ in these circumstances.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 KNOW, THAT'S FAIR, BUT YOUR ABELIST VIEWS REALLY ANNOY ME

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Or perhaps the poster thinks that aeroplanes miraculously cure incontinence ?

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

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.

I have been severely physically disabled since birth, born without eyes and with multiple joint deformities. Thanks to my amazing parents I was able to access an excellent education and was an academic high-achiever, both at school and at university. I work in a job I love but I am aware that I would be completely unable to do almost any job in the modern world without the array of adaptive technology, specialist equipment and personal support which makes it possible for me to get to work and perform while there.
Most employers would be unable or unwilling to put the infrastructure in place to make employing someone like me possible as it can be prohibitively expensive to do so. I am very fortunate to work for a company who pride themselves on being a disabled-friendly employer and have gone the extra mile to accommodate me. However, without my PIP, I would be struggling to remain in work as it helps to defray some, though by no means all, of the extra costs related to my disability, just to allow me to function day to day.
I have a lovely family and a great social life with friends and am not lacking in confidence. No amount of socialisation would allow me to eschew all the specialist equipment I require in order to work. To suggest that all disabled people need to allow them to work as effectively as non-disabled people is to try a bit harder and have more confidence is both an extremely foolish and dangerous suggestion.
Do you know what it would take to genuinely make it possible for more disabled people to work? Money, lots of money. To make workplaces accessible to the whole spectrum of disabilities, to pay for equipment and adaptations, to pay for people to support disabled staff. The posters on here whinging about the few hundred pounds a month we get in PIP aren't going to like that.
Also, the number of people I see on here moaning about reasonable adjustments for disabled people in the workplace sends the clear message that we can't win either way, we're lazy work-shy scroungers if we don't work and an inconvenience or demanding 'special treatment' if we do work.

And also, l read a long article somewhere about this: squeezed living standards.

People may have not bothered before, but now can’t afford to not bother. Long Covid is another thing that’s pushed numbers up.

Assessors are not based in Jobcentres. The assessments are outsourced to private companies. They may share Jobcentre premises in some cases, but they do not interact. And the assessments are standardised. Assessors all follow the same process and are bound by strict rules - they are also randomly audited. And assessors don’t make the decision on who gets benefit, that is down to DWP case managers, based on the assessors report.

Well I hope it increases people’s likeliness of getting the support they need. I wonder how many people have been fobbed off because someone at the other end of the phone thought they were lying because they couldn’t see them. So yes, good news, @PAYE

Most people agree with catching out benefits cheats. If you are not a benefits cheat then why the hostility to honest people, who you call a baying mob.

Maybe because fraud and error is round 0.4% in the disability benefits system, which is very low, and yet disabled people are being painted as feckless and workshy for claiming benefits they’re perfectly entitled to ?

I used to work in a medical field and lots of my colleagues had been/were medical assessors for the DWP. The vast majority of them used to believe that a very significant number of claimants were either completely making up their illness or significantly exaggerating their symptoms to get benefits! The same with children getting DLA for adhd etc…they were just labelled as feral brats with poor parenting.

Wow they sound like nice people. I get you’re glad you don’t work with them anymore.

That is only the statistics of people who have been proven to commit fraud….i would put money on it the actual numbers committing fraud and not being caught is far far higher.

Because if someone is committing benefit fraud they will do so no matter what obstacles are in there way by making pip harder to get it will mean genuine claimants will suffer

Some how I don't think you have experienced disability. The planning, energy and aftermath of such appointments. The fact that everything is more expensive when you can't just leave the house whenever you fancy, that things are not always accessible. That life is already small and difficult enough. Disabled people are already fighting an invisible battle, and the recent rhetoric that pip claimants are usually lying for money is awful.