Update on Disability Living Allowance (DLA) reform

14 November 2011

Second draft of the Personal Independence (PIP) assessment criteria published

Sense, deafblind people and families have been successful in ensuring some real changes to the draft of the Personal Independence Payment assessment.

PIP will replace DLA for people between 16 and 64 from 2013. Since the first draft was published in May 2011, Sense has been campaigning to ensure the criteria take better account of the needs of deafblind people. Also this summer a group of deafblind people and family members volunteered to test the first draft of the criteria.

The Government has now published the second draft of the assessment criteria for Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The combined effort of deafblind people, families and Sense has led to some genuine changes in the second draft of the criteria which include:

  • An improved understanding of communication support needs;
  • A new section on barriers to social engagement;
  • A new separate section on decision-making
  • An improved section on barriers to getting around.

Sue Brown, Head of Public Policy said:

“Thanks to the deafblind people and families who took on the challenge of volunteering for the testing, real changes have been made to the criteria.

"While we haven’t yet secured all the changes we would like, it is clear that their involvement led to real change and definitely helped to make sure that deafblind people are not being forgotten as the criteria are developed.”

However we still have significant concerns about the criteria and the amount of points that each one receives. The Government has still not decided on the thresholds for the standard and enhanced rates. So without these thresholds it is very difficult to know how well the assessment will work for deafblind people.

Sense will continue to work with deafblind people, families and practitioners to analyse the new criteria in detail. We will then feed this back to Ministers, parliamentarians and DWP officials.

The full criteria and the explanatory notes are on the Department of Work and Pensions website.

Read the Sense report on assessment for Personal Independence Payment below- the experiences of deafblind people who took part in testing the assessment for the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

Download the PIP report (PDF 750KB)

Download the PIP report (TXT 21KB)

Find out more about Sense’s campaigning work on changes to DLA and how to get involved.