The Work and Pensions Committee launched an inquiry into the effectiveness of assessments for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
Read our response to Work and Pensions Committee PIP and ESA Assessments inquiry
As part of the inquiry on PIP and ESA Assessments, the Work and Pensions Committee would like to hear about your experience of claiming PIP or ESA, via this web forum
The web forum closes on Friday 10 November 2017.
Assessors and assessments
- Do contractor assessors possess sufficient expertise to carry out assessments for people with a wide range of health conditions?
- Is Department of Work and Pensions quality control for contractors sufficient and effective?
- Should the options for reforming the Work Capability Assessment mooted in the Government’s Improving Lives green paper be taken forward?
- What examples of best practice in assessing eligibility for benefits are available internationally, and how transferrable are they to ESA and/or PIP?
Mandatory Reconsideration and appeal
- Why do claimants seek to overturn initial assessment outcomes for ESA and/or PIP?
- Why are levels of disputed decisions higher for PIP than for ESA?
- Is the Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) process working well for claimants of ESA and/or PIP?
- What accounts for the rate of overturned decisions at appeal for PIP and/or ESA?
- Are there lessons that could be learned from the ESA MR and appeal process for PIP and vice-versa?
- What changes could be made earlier in the process to ensure fewer claimants feel they need to appeal?
Claimant experiences
- Do prospective claimants currently understand the purpose of the assessment?
- How could claimants be helped to better understand the assessment process?
- Are some groups of claimants particularly likely to encounter problems with their assessments – and if so, how can this be addressed?
- Should the assessment processes for PIP and ESA be more closely integrated? How else might the processes be streamlined for claimants?