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Personal Independence Payment: Appeals

Question for Department for Work and Pensions

UIN 10905, tabled on 22 January 2024

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 11 January 2023 to Question 7225 on Personal Independence Payment: Appeals, if he will publish the (a) number and proportion of personal independence payment claims overturned by Tribunal, broken down by primary reason, and (b) feedback provided by his Department's Presenting Officers for each of the last three years.

Answered on

30 January 2024

The table below shows the number of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) decisions overturned at Tribunal by reason between January 2021 and September 2023.

These figures are the result of a complex data match across a number of data sets. This data is unpublished data and should therefore be used with caution, as it may be subject to future revision.

To note, this information is taken from Decision Notices and recorded on the PIP computer system.

This data only provides one reason per appeal why decisions by DWP decision makers have been overturned at a tribunal hearing, and therefore may not give the full story as there may be other or multiple reasons.

Appeals data is taken from the DWP PIP computer system’s management information. Therefore, this appeal data may differ from that held by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service for various reasons such as delays in data recording and other methodological differences in collating and preparing statistics.

As with all DWP processes, we continuously review and have made improvements to our decision-making processes to help ensure we make the right decision as early as possible in the claim journey. We have introduced a new approach to decision making at both the initial decision and the Mandatory Reconsideration stage, giving Decision Makers additional time to proactively contact customers where they think additional evidence may support the claim.

The feedback from Presenting Officers is done on a case-by-case basis and only at a local level. Whilst trends are identified to help inform future decision making - this includes feeding back to Healthcare Professionals - there are no plans to consolidate and publish the feedback in data recording and other methodological differences in collating and preparing statistics.

Summary reason DWP decision
overturned at Tribunal hearing

Appeal Clearance Year

2021

2022

2023 (up to September)

New written evidence provided at hearing

400

200

300

Cogent Oral Evidence

8,800

8,800

11,800

Reached a Different Conclusion on
Substantially the Same Facts

16,300

16,700

17,500

Other

1,900

1,900

2,000