One to one benefit assessments

[Amazonjaunt]

It would save money in the long run if all benefits claims had to be assessed one to one, surely?

More than 70 per cent of PIP applicants do not have face to face assessments. The ones who are least likely to be lying probably are included in that 70 per cent, but they are unlikely to constitute all of it.

I think it's completely random.

All my clients had MH issues, but quite a few had physical health problems as well. The ones with well-documented physical conditions seemed just as likely to have F2F assessments as phone ones, including one man who had spina bifida and was a wheelchair user.

There is no community anymore

The reports are quite frequently wrong.

when I first applied my report that was written was clearly someone else’s and even had their name on.

their injuries sounded horrific - but had nothing to do with me.

yes I do still have it on paper.

I’m told this is quite common.

Nothing will, welfare reform just puts more pressure on the nhs and local councils so no money will be saved

That would be funny if it wasn't also enraging.

I bet you enjoyed drafting your grounds of appeal though @inthequietofdawn !

You're assuming that the reason people who aren't seen are more likely to be awarded, than those who are seen, is because they managed to fool the assessors better by not being present.

But from both personal experience and being generally informed, I would say that the reason is it's easier for assessors to miss, ignore, or fail to fully identify (whether accidentally or deliberately) the claimant's issues in person.

Therefore the "true" claim rate is closer to the unseen applicants. Even then though, it's very common for it to be initially refused and then overturned at MR or appeal stage. I.e. the successful claim rate should actually be higher than it is, not lower. Unless you just want to save money, or hate disabled people. Is one of those your motive for wanting this change?

My disability means that I would not get a fair assessment in person, so yes, I would be one of those people who might lose it. But not because I don't meet the criteria. The first time I applied (both my claims were assessed not in person), it was refused (and then awarded at MR). At renewal, it was awarded for 10 years (which is the max).

For my daughter, I had to go through three tribunals to get DLA awarded.

If you'd experienced this exhausting, dehumanising process yourself (and don't forget that disability benefits are supposed to be making life easier for us, not the opposite!), maybe you'd be less keen to withhold them from others (though sometimes the opposite is true, and people pull up the drawbridge behind them, out of fear).

Are they? If so why are they turned down in the first place?

Why?

There have been some major benefit scams
Example

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn330zkvnmyo

Why would you be less likely to get a fair assessment in person when you could still provide the same evidence that you would have provided if you were assessed unseen?

Okay, so thank you for being explicit about your thoughts that some PIP claimants are lying.

PIP has a much lower rate of fraud than any other UK benefit, so it doesn't make financial sense to focus on it.

This article reports the percentage of fraud for PIP as 0% & gives comparator for other benefits.
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/cost-of-living/rate-pip-benefits-fraud-what-31320076

Government figures state 0.4% for 2025 and 1.4 for this year. Bear in mind that some (?most) of this will be due to people not reporting improvements in theor conditions, so wouldn't be reduced by increasing f2f assessments. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-ending-fye-2026-estimates/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-ending-fye-2026-estimates

Have you actually looked at a PIP form? They're fairly intrusive and humiliating & really not the easiest to fake (although I say this as someone who agonised over the accuracy to the point it makes me (more) ill.

Some of the applicants are lying/exaggerating, yes. Some think they are entitled to benefits but they don’t actually qualify.

What are you basing that ‘doubt’ on since your posts indicate you know precisely nothing about PIP?

You would be wrong. As it has been explained, those with paper-based assessments are the ones where there is strong evidence of need. If there wasn’t, they wouldn’t be having a paper-based assessment.

I did! Needless to say the appeal resulted in enhanced of both components being awarded after a very brief hearing.

I also drafted a complaint. The response said the HCP had ‘since left the service’. Hopefully moved on to something not involving contact with disabled people. A career in writing fiction might have been more up their street.

But would the assessing everyone f2f cost more or less than what is paid to the 1.4% who are lying or exaggerating. I reckon it would be more.

This article is shocking and very much helps to back up the idea that benefits claims should be assessed face to face where possible.

Probably becuase the DWP decision maker then puts more weight on the less accurate assessment report than the more accurate claimant application form /medical evidence.

More than 70 per cent of PIP claimants are not assessed face to face. I do not believe all 70 per cent of those are the ones where there is the strongest evidence of need.

So all the claimants are honest and all the assessors aren’t?

How about the >1000 people who died while challenging their decision? Also shocking? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58284613

In the quote chain I was commenting on, you were talking about paper-based assessments only. 70% do not have paper-based assessments. Claimants who have paper-based assessments do have strong evidence. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have paper-based assessments, they would have a phone, virtual or F2F assessment.

Ok so I’m bored.

I’m going to estimate the cost of a 1:1 in person assessment for everyone on benefits.

there are currently 24.3 million people on benefits in the U.K. out of a population of 70 million.

so let’s assume you want to see all of them. State pension and pension credit are not immune from fraud - pension credit has a fraud rate of 4.5% and an overpayment rate of 10% suggesting that if they could only get rid or errors in their own system they’d save as much as from preventing all fraud.

data here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-ending-fye-2026-estimates/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-ending-fye-2026-estimates

ok, so 24.3 million in person 1:1 interviews. Let’s assume they all take place at the local jobcentre because I can’t be arsed to work out travelling times.

Lets say ten minutes each. That’s barely enough time to check ID documents and eyeball the person but anyway.

9-5 with an hour for lunch is 7 hours a day. So 6 an hour (including data entry in the appointment) is 42 a day.

Let’s say it’s a minimum wage job to do these interviews. Minimum wage is 12.71 an hour if over 21.
https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates

so at 6 an hour it’d cost in wages 12.71 divided by 6 which is close enough 2 quid per interview.

multiply that by 24.3 million and it’s 48.6 million pounds just for a ten minute interview that’ll barely have time to check legal documents.

pip interviews are more like 1.5 to 2 hours which would be a cost of 25.42 per person which would give a cost of

25.42 x 24.3 gives 617.70 million pounds which is genuinely quite a lot of money.

it also wouldn’t catch all the fraud (or even much of it) because most uc claims etc do identity verification via phone and hooking into bank accounts, and pip applications ask for access to all your nhs data.

there’s better ways to spend 617 million quid.

I was talking about all the people who are not assessed face to face.

Well, according to the Government's figures 98.6% of claimants are honest.

As for assessors, an inaccurate report does not necessarily mean that they are lying. It might mean they don't have the relevant expertise, take short-cuts and come to inaccurate conclusions, are given unhelpful guidelines, have limited time etc.

I don't believe my assessor for WCA was deliberately lying, but the assessment was still pretty inaccurate! Not just my opinion BTW, I was initially put in the work related activity group and when I joined the program I was sent on the advisors said I shouldn't have been there🤷‍♀️