The charity Citizens Advice said the delay in processing Personal Independence Payment (Pip) claims was causing widespread stress and hardship. About 150 people an hour contacted her counselors for one-on-one help with delays. He urged the welfare secretary, Thérèse Coffey, to “grasp” the crisis and relieve pressure on the system. Around 327,000 people, many on low incomes, were waiting for a Pip claim to be processed, with delays delaying almost £300 million in benefit payments. “Delays in getting money to people who deserve it can ruin lives. With costs ever increasing, people need this regular support now, not a retrospective payment months or years in the future,” said Dame Clare Moriarty, chief executive of Citizens Advice. The delays meant many new claimants entitled to the £150 disability allowance announced by the government in May were unlikely to receive it before energy prices rose again in October, Citizens Advice said. Lynne 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, sparking outrage and her 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 took a toll on my health,” he said. The Personal Independence Payment is a non-means-tested benefit designed to support recipients with the extra costs of daily living and mobility associated with disability. People with mental health as their main disabling condition make up almost half of all Pip applicants of working age. Citizens Advice believes the growing delays are caused by labor shortages, the post-pandemic release of dormant demand for Pip and the emergence of long-term health conditions related to Covid. graphic Labor called the delays another example of a “pending Britain”. Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow welfare secretary, said: “Amid a cost of living crisis, it is unacceptable that disabled people are being made to wait an average of five months to receive vital social security.” The current Pip delays are the latest in a row over the scrapping of 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 spending by 20%. In 2015, a tribunal put the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on notice after average Pip processing times rose to 42 weeks a year earlier, pushing claimants into hardship. After hiring hundreds more staff, the average Pip wait was reduced to 12 weeks. Since 2018, however, processing times have steadily increased. A separate analysis, published on Wednesday by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, concluded that spending on disability benefits has soared, and at a faster rate than before Pip was introduced, mainly due to a long-term increase in claims for disability benefits due to increase in mental health conditions. Heidi Karjalainen, Research Economist at the IFS said: “Over the past three decades, the proportion of working-age people claiming disability benefits has risen from 2% to 6%. This reflects an increasing rate of mental health conditions across society as a whole. If this trend continues – or even is accelerated by the pandemic – it will add further pressure to disability benefit spending.” A DWP spokesman said: “We are continuing to improve our services to the millions of disabled people claiming benefits, with processing times down by six weeks compared to last year, and supporting those who can work to find gainful employment, with 1.3 million more disabled people commuting to work in the last five years.”
