Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of (a) children under 16 and (b) young people between the ages of 16 and 25 are successful in their (i) PIP and (ii) DLA applications at (A) initial application and (B) appeal stage in (1) Bournemouth and (2) the rest of the UK.

Between October 2019 and September 2024, for claimants aged 16 to 25 inclusive, in England and Wales, there were 346,000 PIP clearances that were awarded at initial decision, which was 60% of initial PIP clearances for that age range. For the same clearances, 15,000 (3% of initial clearances) were awarded at the mandatory reconsideration stage (between the initial decision and appeal stage), 5,000 (1% of initial decisions) were lapsed, where the Department revises its decision in favour of the claimant before reaching tribunal, and 9,000 (2% of initial decisions) were overturned in favour of the claimant at appeal.

Between October 2019 and September 2024, for claimants aged 16 to 25 in Bournemouth, there were 1,090 PIP clearances that were awarded at initial decision, which was 57% of PIP clearances for that age range. For the same clearances, 50 (3% of initial clearances) were awarded at the mandatory reconsideration stage (between the initial decision and appeal stage), 20 (1% of initial clearances) were lapsed, where the Department revises its decision in favour of the claimants before reaching tribunal, and 30 (2% of initial clearances) were overturned in favour of the claimant at appeal.

Claimants aged under 16 cannot claim PIP.

For Disability Living Allowance (DLA), the information requested is not readily available for the specified geographical breakdowns. To provide this would incur a disproportionate cost. We have provided the information requested for England & Wales below:

(a) In FY24/25, 179,000 normal claims were awarded DLA for children. This is equivalent to a success rate of 84%.

(b) The latest Tribunal Statistics by Ministry of Justice indicates there were 1,390 decisions in favour of claimants that were cleared at hearing, equivalent to a success rate of 59%, between Q1-Q3 of FY2024/25.

Notes:

- Figures provided above are for PIP claims within DWP policy ownership and therefore exclude claimants in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

- PIP data includes normal rules and special rules for end of life claimants, and is for both new claims and DLA reassessment claims.

- PIP data has been rounded to the nearest 1,000 for England and Wales level data, and rounded to the nearest 10 for data relating specifically to Bournemouth.

- Percentages have been rounded to the nearest percent.

- Components may not sum to totals due to rounding.

- PIP data has been expanded to a 5-year time span to provide adequate data specific to Bournemouth.

- Appeals data is currently available to the end of December 2024. Because of this, clearances (which are available to the end of January 2025) have had to be limited to the end of September 2024 to allow time for a claimant to go through the appeal process which takes an average of 3 months.

- Appeals data taken from the DWP PIP computer system’s management information. Therefore, this appeals data may differ from that held by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service for various reasons such as delays in data recording and other methodological differences in collating and preparing statistics.

- Not all Tribunal appeals will relate to the outcome of the PIP assessment, but other aspects of the PIP process.

- The Local Authority of Bournemouth was used to identify claimants in Bournemouth. The Local Authority geography relates to the origin of the claim (i.e. derived from claimant’s postcode) rather than the location of where the tribunal was held.

- Figures for DLA are rounded to the nearest thousand in (a) and nearest 10 in (b).