February 2019 – Loss of Benefits for Mental Health Claimants

06/02/2019

According to research from the University of York, mental health claimants are 2.4 times as likely to lose their benefit on transfer from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) compared to claimants with a non-psychiatric condition.

They analysed government data of claimants moving from an existing DLA entitlement to PIP between April 2013 and October 2016. Of the 148,700 DLA claimants with a psychiatric condition and 178,300 DLA claimants with a non-psychiatric condition:

 

47,741 claimants with a psychiatric condition (32 per cent) lost entitlement to disability benefits and

 

29,323 claimants with a non-psychiatric condition (16.4 per cent) lost entitlement to disability benefits

 

The reasons for the discrepancy are unclear, but the findings support concerns that PIP assessors had a lack of specialist mental health knowledge and used informal observations to make judgments on claimants mental health conditions.

 

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