The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to recommence the transfer process for around 150,000 adult Disability Living Allowance (DLA) claimants to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) from September. An initial test involving approximately 3,000 claimants will begin in September, followed by a wider rollout of the transfer programme.
Transfer programme details
Under the programme, claimants will not automatically receive PIP. Instead, they will be required to submit a new claim for the disability benefit, which is currently under review as part of the Labour Party government's Timms Review. The planned transfer was paused in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The DWP is currently experiencing a high volume of new PIP claims and aims to prioritise these assessments. Working-age DLA claimants may still need to apply for PIP if they reach the end of a fixed-period DLA award or if there is a change in their condition affecting their payment rate. Claimants can also voluntarily apply for PIP if they believe they would be better off.
Claimant obligations and deadlines
The DWP will contact claimants and ask them to make a PIP claim. Once contacted, claimants have four weeks to start their PIP claim. If they start within this period, their DLA payments will continue until the PIP claim is decided. If they fail to start within four weeks, DLA payments will stop. The DWP will then send a reminder and give another four weeks to start the claim. If the claim is started before the final deadline, DLA payments will be reinstated until the PIP decision. If the final deadline is missed, the DLA claim will be closed.
