Personal Independence Payment: Appeals
(asked on 14th June 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government (1) how many, and what proportion of, existing claimants receiving Personal Independence Payment Review forms in each of the past 12 months have (a) requested an extension, (b) had their request accepted, or (c) had their request rejected; (2) how many, and what proportion of, Personal Independence Payment Review forms issued in each of the past 12 months have been (a) returned on time, (b) returned late, and (c) not returned; and (3) how many, and what proportion of, claimants making a telephone call regarding a Personal Independence Payment Review form in the past 12 months have (a) waited on hold for longer than 60 minutes, or (b) had their call disconnected.
Answered by
Viscount Younger of Leckie
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We can confirm that the department holds some of the information requested. We have numbered your questions and our response to each, for ease of reference.
- Extensions to Review forms
The information requested (extensions and acceptance status) is not readily available, and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
The department recognises the importance of claimants having the opportunity to provide information, and evidence about their disabilities, and health conditions, in their review forms in support of their awards, and there are existing provisions available that allow additional time, and support, to those who require it.
For Personal Independence Payment (PIP), safeguards are already in place to allow for additional time for claimants to submit their Award Review 1 (AR1) form. Claimants can ask for additional time to complete their AR1 form and can do so on more than one occasion.
- Return of Review forms
The information requested for on-time and late AR1 form returns is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Data for AR1 forms not returned has been provided in the table below. Data is available up to the end of April 2023, but since the default time allowance for returning an AR1 form is 40 days, the latest two months of data for AR1 forms issued have not been included. It is worth noting there are multiple reasons a form may not be returned within 40 days, or at all, without a resulting disallowance. For example, where a claimant has an additional support marker, or where an extension has been granted. On average, only 7% of claimants in the time period, who received AR1 forms, were disallowed for non-return.
Table 1 below shows, for each of the latest 12 months of useable data, how many AR1 forms were issued and how many, and what proportion, were not returned by the end of available data. This will include claimants who have not returned their form, but have not been disallowed for the reasons explained previously.
Table 1: Number and proportion of AR1 forms not returned by 30th April 2023
Month AR1 form was issued | Total number of AR1 forms sent out in month | Number of AR1 forms not returned by 30th April 2023 | Proportion of AR1 forms not returned by 30th April 2023 |
Mar 22 | 42,600 | 12,900 | 30% |
Apr 22 | 42,800 | 11,300 | 26% |
May 22 | 46,600 | 12,500 | 27% |
Jun 22 | 48,600 | 12,200 | 25% |
Jul 22 | 48,600 | 11,900 | 24% |
Aug 22 | 55,000 | 13,500 | 25% |
Sep 22 | 52,700 | 13,100 | 25% |
Oct 22 | 48,600 | 12,600 | 26% |
Nov 22 | 53,000 | 13,400 | 25% |
Dec 22 | 51,200 | 10,000 | 19% |
Jan 23 | 60,200 | 15,000 | 25% |
Feb 23 | 49,500 | 14,300 | 29% |
Data Source: PIP Atomic Data Source (ADS)
Notes:
- Figures have been rounded to the nearest 100;
- Data for England and Wales only;
- Data excludes claimants with special rules for the terminally ill.
- Telephone calls regarding Review forms
The information requested (telephony figures for those relating to AR1 forms) is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.