Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people with (a) sight loss or (b) a visual impairment that are new claimants of personal independence payments (PIP) did not receive an award during their initial PIP assessment but received an award at (a) mandatory reconsideration and (b) tribunal in each year since 2013.
Since Personal Independence Payment (PIP) was introduced 43,230 decisions have been made for people who have a primary disabling condition of visual disease up to June 2018. 10,960 people did not receive an award following their initial PIP assessment, 570 of these decisions were changed at mandatory reconsideration and 1,100 were overturned at tribunal.
Detailed breakdowns by financial year can be found below. The year relates to the year of the initial decision; mandatory reconsiderations or appeals may have taken place in a different financial year to the initial decision.
Financial year | Decisions made | Failed initial assessment | Failed initial assessment - Changed at mandatory reconsideration | Failed initial assessment - Overturned at tribunal appeal |
2013-14 | 560 | 150 | 10 | 10 |
2014-15 | 5,450 | 1,730 | 80 | 120 |
2015-16 | 7,600 | 2,370 | 100 | 280 |
2016-17 | 14,490 | 3,160 | 200 | 470 |
2017-18 | 12,270 | 2,930 | 160 | 210 |
April to June 2018 | 2,860 | 620 | 10 | 0 |
Since PIP was introduced 3.5m decisions have been made for all health conditions up to June 2018, of these 9% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned.
The data has been rounded to the nearest 10.
Data is based on primary disabling condition as recorded on the PIP computer systems. Claimants may often have multiple disabling conditions upon which the decision is based but only the primary condition is shown in these statistics. It is not possible to break down the condition of “visual disease” into sight loss or visual impairment from the data.
The appeals may include decisions which are changed at mandatory reconsideration, and where the claimant continues to appeal for a higher PIP award, are then changed again at tribunal appeal.