DWP introduces major change after 'significant' PIP benefit backlog

The benefits department has increased its caseworker numbers by 5.5% over the last year with managers being hired specifically for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) reviews

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has hired more caseworkers over the last year to tackle the major benefit backlog.

According to reports Civil Service World, the benefits department has increased its caseworker numbers by 5.5% with managers being hired specifically for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) reviews. The move hopes to tackle the "significant" delays with PIP reviews and applications.

PIP is the main disability benefit in the UK with 3.6million people claiming it. The payments are to help with the extra costs of having a disability and it can be claimed whether you are working or not. With PIP, you are awarded the benefit for a certain amount of time such as two or three years.

At the end of the award period, claimants must undergo a PIP review to determine if their medical condition or disability has changed and whether their benefit payments should change. In a response to a parliamentary question, the Work and Pensions Minister Sir Stephen Timms acknowledged that “many” PIP claimants were“waiting longer than expected for their review to be undertaken”.

He said: "We have been actively recruiting additional case managers to meet increased demand for PIP, which means we are now in a position to begin to deploy additional resources onto award reviews. This will increase the number of review cases we can complete in-house."

According to DWP figures, in August the department employed 1,948 full-time case managers, this up 5.5% from 1,847 the previous year and "more recruitment" is planned. Civil Service World reports that the DWP will be training new case managers to work on less complex claims rather than recruiting case managers specifically to undertake PIP reviews. This will give experienced case managers more time to review cases. The DWP said that the number of case managers working on a specific area does change according to demand.

The DWP does not publish statistics on how long it takes to complete PIP reviews, however, in July it took 15 weeks on average for a PIP claim to be processed - so from the point of application to the award letter being sent out. In May, there were 392,000 PIP award reviews outstanding in England and Wales, according to figures released through a Freedom of Information (FOI) from Benefits and Work. The benefits charity calculated that it could take the department ten years to clear this backlog. This was based on the fact that the department had only managed to reduce the overall backlog of outstanding award reviews by 10,000 in the last quarter.

DWP has previously blamed the long delays to reviews on an increase in demand for PIP. In his response to the question asked by Labour MP Katie White, Sir Stephen Timmsnoted said the DWP continuing “to prioritise new claims to PIP to ensure claims are put into payment as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this means many customers are waiting longer than expected for their review to be undertaken."

The pensions minister noted that PIP awards can be extended for up to 12 months. This means if someone's review is delayed, they will continue to get their benefit payments. CSW reports that PIP claimants are being contacted up to a year before their award is set to be reviewed to allow for delays.

Timms also said the DWP had introduced processes to “increase efficiency and move cases through the system more quickly”. This included enabling case managers to make decisions on reviews without the need for a functional assessment “where sufficient evidence/information is available”. Other changes include a “light-touch” regime for PIP recipients with the most severe conditions, on the highest level of support, who now receive an ongoing PIP award with a light-touch review every 10 years.