Hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities and the chronically ill in the UK are losing cash payments worth up to £ 157 a week because bureaucratic delays have increased processing times for disability benefit applications to an average of five months.
The charity Citizens Advice said the delay in processing personal independence (Pip) payment claims was causing widespread stress and hardship. Approximately 150 people per hour contacted their advisors for individual help with the delays.
He urged Social Welfare Secretary Thérèse Coffey to “control” the crisis and relieve pressure on the system. Some 327,000 people, many on low incomes, were waiting for a Pip application to be processed, with delays resulting in nearly £ 300 million in benefit payments.
“Delays in getting money from people who are entitled to it can ruin lives. With costs rising all the time, people need this regular support now, not a backdated payment months or years into the future.” , said Dame Clare Moriarty, executive director of Citizens Advice.
The delays meant many new applicants eligible for payment of support for the cost of living benefit of the £ 150 disability benefit announced by the government in May are unlikely to get it before energy prices rise 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 had waited nine months for her Pip application to be processed in past, causing him fury and resignation. and despair.
He could not afford to hire anyone to clean his house or help him with day-to-day chores, forcing him to take on tasks his body could not do. “Those nine months were exhausting mentally and physically and have had an adverse effect on my health,” he said.
Payment for personal independence is a non-committed resource benefit designed to support beneficiaries with the additional costs of daily living and mobility associated with disability. People with mental health as their main disabling condition account for almost half of all Pip applicants of working age.
Citizens Advice believes the growing delays are caused by labor shortages, the release of accumulated Pip demand after the pandemic, and the emergence of long-term Covid-related health conditions.
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Labor called the delays another example of “Britain”. Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow welfare secretary, said: “In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, it is unacceptable that people with disabilities have to wait an average of five months to receive vital social security.” .
Pip’s current arrears are the latest in a series of controversies to favor profit, 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 thousands of million reducing spending by 20%.
In 2015, a court warned the Department of Labor and Pensions (DWP) after Pip’s average processing time had skyrocketed to 42 weeks a year earlier, which put plaintiffs in trouble. After hiring hundreds more staff, Pip’s average wait was reduced to 12 weeks. Since 2018, however, processing times have steadily increased.
A separate analysis, published Wednesday by the Institute for Tax Studies, concluded that spending on disability benefits had skyrocketed, and at a faster pace than before the introduction of Pip, mainly due to growth in long-term disability benefit applications driven by an increase in mental health conditions.
Heidi Karjalainen, an research economist at IFS, said: “Over the past three decades, the fraction of people of working age claiming disability benefits has increased from 2% to 6%. This reflects a growing rate of disability conditions. mental health in society as a whole. If this trend continues, or is even accelerated by the pandemic, it will increase the pressure on spending on disability benefits. “
A DWP spokesman said: “We continue to improve our service to the millions of people with disabilities claiming benefits, with a reduction in processing times six weeks from last year, and we are supporting those who can work to find a satisfactory job, with 1.3 million more people with disabilities who have gone to work for the last five years. “