Huge changes are in the pipeline for PIP, welfare and physical and mental health benefits, the government has confirmed – but for now, Personal Independence Payments will still pay out up to £9,747 a year from April 6.
As mentioned in Rachel Reeves’ spring statement on Wednesday, the government has launched a consultation on making sweeping reforms to benefits, targeting in particular health benefits, PIP and Universal Credit. The Chancellor announced that the health element of Universal Credit (which replaced ‘Incapacity benefit’) is going to be cut by 50% and frozen for new applicants, while changes already under consideration for PIP could see assessments made more difficult to pass in future, meaning fewer would qualify to receive the money.
But for now, the Department for Work and Pensions still offers payments for PIP as it always has, and from April the monthly payments will go up by 1.7% for inflation, from £798 a month to £812.28 a month up to a total of £9,747.40 for someone claiming the maximum allowances for both parts of PIP.
The DWPwill hand out the boost next month to increase the amount paid to people claiming PIP and although a potential reform of the system is being mooted, the current scheme is still valid and still paying out cash to claimants battling health conditions.
It means that if you have a health condition or disability that affects your daily life, you could see benefits totalling a maximum of £110.40 a week for daily living costs and £77.05 a week for mobility costs.
Eligibility for the benefit depends on an assessment, so having one of these conditions isn’t a guarantee of being able to claim the cash, and having a health condition not listed here could still see you eligible.
The PIP payments are made up of two elements for living and two for mobility:
-
Standard rate for daily living: £73.90 per week from April
-
Enhanced rate for daily living: £110.40 a week
-
Standard rate for mobility :£29.20 a week
-
Enhanced rate for mobility :£77.05 per week
What will happen to PIP in future?
Tightening of benefits rules will impact around three million families on incapacity benefits, while 800,000 people will have reduced personal independence payments (PIP)..
Stricter tests for PIP, the main benefit for people with disabilities or those with long-term illness to help with extra living costs, is expected to be implemented in future.
The Green Paper “Pathways to Work” published on March 18 suggests tightening eligibility for PIP to make it harder for some groups of disabled people to qualify for the daily living component of PIP.
In addition to the current scoring system, claimants will need to score at least four points in anyone daily living activity to qualify for the daily living component.
The Work Capability Assessment will be scrapped by April 2028, so those claiming the health element of Universal Credit will have to receive a daily living award from PIP instead. Those who currently qualify for Universal Credit health element under the current system but do not qualify for PIP’s daily living element will lose out.
