How to claim Personal Independence Payment

PIP is for people aged 16 or over and under State Pension age who have a long-term physical or mental health condition or disability that causes difficulty with daily living activities, getting around, or both. People over State Pension age who have never claimed a disability benefit are directed to Attendance Allowance instead, which is a different benefit with a different structure.

There is a qualifying period with two limbs. The difficulties must have existed for at least three months, and must be expected to continue for at least nine more. This filters out short-term illness and injury. There is an exception under the special rules for end of life, where the qualifying period is waived and claims are fast-tracked.

PIP has nothing to do with money coming in. It is not affected by savings, by earnings, by a partner's income, or by other benefits — and it does not count as income for tax. It is one of the few working-age payments that a professional in a well-paid job can legitimately claim, and the belief that it is only for people out of work costs a great many people an award.

The daily living activities cover preparing food, taking nutrition, managing therapy or monitoring a health condition, washing and bathing, managing toilet needs, dressing and undressing, communicating verbally, reading, engaging with other people face to face, and making budgeting decisions. The mobility activities cover planning and following a journey, and moving around.

Points are awarded against the highest descriptor that applies to you for the majority of days. Eight points in a component pays the standard rate and 12 points pays the enhanced rate. Because scoring works this way, an activity where you score two points four times over matters as much as a single activity where you score eight.

Mental health conditions score across both parts, and the planning and following a journey activity is frequently the one that carries an award for someone with anxiety, autism or a cognitive condition. Claimants who assume the mobility component is about walking often leave that activity blank.

Aids and appliances count. If you need a perching stool to prepare food, a shower seat to wash, a pill organiser to manage medication or a stick to walk, that is a scoring descriptor rather than a reason not to claim. Needing something to manage is the point — the benefit is measuring the extra cost and effort of the condition.

Start by telephone with the DWP PIP claim line, unless you have been given access to an online claim route. The date you make that first contact is the date used for payment purposes, provided the form comes back within the deadline. Waiting until you feel organised enough to write everything down costs you money.

You will then be sent the PIP2 form, headed How your disability affects you. There is a return deadline printed on it. If you need longer — because you are waiting for evidence, or because you are too unwell to complete it — ring and ask before the deadline. Extensions are routinely granted; a missed deadline without contact ends the claim.

Answer for a typical day over the last year, not for your best day and not for today. If your condition fluctuates, the rule is the majority of days: if you cannot do something more than half the time, you are treated as unable to do it. Say explicitly how many bad days a week you get.

Apply the reliability test in every answer. Can you do it safely, without risk of harm to yourself or anyone else? Can you do it to an acceptable standard? Can you do it as often as you reasonably need to? Can you do it in a reasonable time, meaning not more than about twice as long as an unimpaired person would take? A no to any of these means you cannot reliably do it.

Use the extra information box. It is where most successful claims are actually won, because the tick boxes cannot capture the pattern. Describe two or three concrete recent examples with what happened afterwards — the meal abandoned halfway, the fall in the shower, the appointment missed because the route changed, the two days in bed after a supermarket trip.

Send supporting evidence you already hold rather than waiting to commission new letters. Repeat prescription lists, clinic letters, care plans, occupational therapy assessments, a social worker's or support worker's letter, and a school or college support plan all help. What helps most is anything that describes function rather than confirming a diagnosis.

Keep a copy of everything you send, and send it in a way that gives you proof of posting or an electronic record. If a form is lost, the copy is the difference between a delay and starting again.

Most claimants are called to a health assessment carried out by a contracted provider rather than by the DWP. It may be by telephone, by video or face to face. It is not a medical examination in any diagnostic sense — the assessor is collecting evidence against descriptors, and the report goes to a DWP decision maker who makes the actual decision.

Take someone with you or have them present on the call. They can prompt, correct and give their own account of what they observe, and a companion's evidence about function is legitimate evidence. Ask for the assessment to be recorded if that is offered.

Answer about the whole day, not the moment. Assessors record informal observations — that you sat comfortably for an hour, that you used a phone, that you travelled alone. If sitting for an hour will cost you the rest of the day, say so at the time rather than discovering it in the report.

Ask for a copy of the assessment report when the decision arrives. You are entitled to it, and reading it is the only way to know what the decision was actually based on. Factual errors in these reports are common and are among the most effective things to raise in a challenge.

Awards are made for a fixed period with a review date, or occasionally on an ongoing basis with a light-touch review for people whose needs will not change. An award is not permanent, and the review is a fresh assessment against the same descriptors — so keep the evidence you gathered.

Report changes in your needs. An improvement must be reported and can reduce an award; a deterioration can increase it, and asking for a review is a right rather than a favour. The risk in asking for an increase is that the whole award is looked at again, which is a genuine consideration but not a reason to under-claim when needs have clearly worsened.

PIP acts as a passport. An award can open access to a Blue Badge, Carer's Allowance for someone looking after you, disability premiums in means-tested benefits, the Motability Scheme at the enhanced mobility rate, and various travel and leisure concessions. Those consequential entitlements are often worth more than the PIP itself.

You cannot appeal straight to a tribunal. Request a mandatory reconsideration within one month of the decision, saying which descriptors you dispute and why, and supplying the evidence that was missing. Refusal at this stage is the ordinary outcome and carries very little information about the strength of your case.

Read the assessment report before you write the request. Take each disputed descriptor in turn, quote what the report says, explain why it is wrong, and point to the evidence. A page structured that way beats five pages of narrative about how difficult life is.

Once you hold the Mandatory Reconsideration Notice you can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal within one month. It is free, it is independent of the DWP, and for PIP the panel includes a doctor and a disability qualified member alongside the judge.

Choose the oral hearing. Attended hearings succeed markedly more often than paper decisions, because the panel can question you and test the assessment report against what you say. Free representation is available from Citizens Advice, local welfare rights services, law centres and disability organisations, and it has to be booked well ahead.

The tribunal can only look at your circumstances as they were at the date of the decision. Deterioration since then is grounds for reporting a change or making a new claim, not for this appeal — say so explicitly so the two are not confused.

Where the tribunal itself goes wrong on a point of law, the further appeal is to the Upper Tribunal, which requires a statement of reasons and permission to appeal. That is specialist territory and is the stage at which expert help matters most.

Scotland has left the PIP system. Adult Disability Payment, delivered by Social Security Scotland under the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, has replaced PIP for working-age disabled people in Scotland, and existing PIP awards for Scottish residents have been transferred across. New Scottish claimants apply to Social Security Scotland, not the DWP.

The activities and descriptors were carried over so that entitlement is broadly comparable, but the process is deliberately different. Social Security Scotland gathers supporting information itself rather than putting the burden on the claimant, face-to-face assessments by a contracted private provider are not the default, and consultations are carried out by health and social care practitioners employed within the system.

The challenge route in Scotland is different too. There is no mandatory reconsideration. You ask for a redetermination, which Social Security Scotland must complete within a set period, and if you disagree with it — or if the agency misses its deadline — you appeal to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland, Social Security Chamber. Do not use the DWP forms or the GOV.UK guidance for a Scottish disability payment.

For Scottish residents of pension age, Pension Age Disability Payment has replaced Attendance Allowance on the same devolved basis. A Scottish household can still contain reserved DWP benefits such as Universal Credit alongside devolved Social Security Scotland payments, and the two follow entirely separate challenge routes.

Northern Ireland keeps PIP but administers it separately. Social security is transferred rather than reserved, the Department for Communities runs the benefit, and while the rules parallel Great Britain the forms, contact points, timescales and appeals body are its own. Use nidirect rather than GOV.UK for a Northern Ireland claim, because the GOV.UK pages describe Great Britain.

Wales is inside the GB system. There is no Welsh disability benefit, and PIP in Wales is administered by the DWP exactly as in England — the divergence in Wales is in devolved services such as social care and concessionary travel, not in the benefit itself.