Hundreds of thousands of disabled and chronically ill people in the UK are missing out on cash payments worth up to £157 a week because bureaucratic delays have increased the time it takes to process disability benefits claims to an average of five months.
The charity Citizens Advice said the backlog in processing personal independence payment (PIP) claims was causing widespread stress and hardship. An estimated 150 people per hour contacted its advisers for one-on-one assistance with delays.
He called on Social Care Minister Therese Coffey to “get a handle” on the crisis and ease the pressure on the system. Around 327,000 people, many on low incomes, were waiting for Pip claims to be processed, with delays holding up almost £300 million in benefit payments.
“Delays in getting money to people who are entitled to it can ruin lives. As costs continue to rise, people need this regular support now, not a backdated payment months or years in the future,” said Dame Clare Moriarty, chief executive of Citizens Advice.
The delays meant many new claimants eligible for the £150 Living Allowance announced by the government in May were unlikely to receive it before energy prices rose again in October, Citizens Advice said.
Lynn Baker, a businesswoman and former NHS nurse who has a degenerative condition that causes severe pain, mobility problems and fatigue, told the Guardian she waited nine months for her Pip application to be processed last year, causing her anger, resignation and despair.
She couldn’t afford to hire anyone to clean her house or help her with daily tasks, forcing her to take on tasks her body couldn’t handle. “Those nine months were mentally and physically exhausting and had an adverse effect on my health,” she said.
Personal Independence Payment is a non-means-tested benefit designed to help recipients with the additional day-to-day living and mobility costs associated with disability. People with mental health as a primary disabling condition make up almost half of all Pip applicants of working age.
Citizens Advice believes the growing backlog is caused by labor shortages, the release of pent-up Pip demand following the pandemic and the emergence of Covid-related long-term health conditions.
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Labor called the delays another example of “Britain going backwards”. Jonathan Ashworth, the social care secretary, said: “In the midst of a cost of living crisis, it is unacceptable that disabled people should be made to wait an average of five months to receive vital social security.”
The current Pip delays are the latest in a series of controversies over capping the benefit, which was introduced as one of a series of welfare reforms in 2013 by the coalition government to reduce the number of claimants and save billions by cutting costs by 20 %.
In 2015, a court warned the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after average Pip processing times jumped to 42 weeks a year earlier, pushing claimants into trouble. After hundreds more staff were hired, Pip’s average wait was reduced to 12 weeks. Since 2018, however, the processing time has been steadily increasing.
Separate analysis published on Wednesday by the Institute for Fiscal Studies concluded that the cost of disability benefits has increased, and at a faster rate than before Pip was introduced, not least because of the long-term growth in disability benefits claims. disability driven by mental health promotion.
Heidi Karjalainen, IFS Research Economist, said: “Over the past three decades, the proportion of working-age people claiming disability benefits has increased from 2% to 6%. This reflects the increasing rate of mental illness in society as a whole. If this trend continues – or is even accelerated by the pandemic – it will add further pressure to the cost of disability benefits.”
A DWP spokesman said: “We continue to improve our services for the millions of disabled people who claim benefits, with processing times now six weeks shorter than last year and supporting those who can work to find full work, with an additional 1.3 million disabled people entering work in the past five years.’
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