Key points
A summary of the main stories of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) at February 2024:
- In February 2024, 3,760 PIP claims were registered.
- There were 4,700 claims cleared in February 2024. Excluding withdrawn claims, 60% were awarded PIP at the initial decision.
- The average (median) clearance time, from the date a claim is registered to the initial decision being made during February 2024, was 14 weeks.
- 205,840 claimants were in receipt of PIP on 29 February 2024.
- 42% (86,260) of claims in payment are awarded the enhanced rate for both the daily living and mobility components.
- 45% (92,500) of claims in payment have a main disabling condition recorded under the highest medical category of ‘Psychiatric disorders (Mental Illness)’.
Introduction
PIP helps with some of the extra costs caused by long term disability, ill health or terminal ill health. From 20th June 2016, the Department for Communities (DfC) began to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for working age people with PIP.
This quarterly summary contains official National Statistics on PIP in Northern Ireland. Key information is included on the nature of the award and characteristics of claims in payment as well as registrations, clearances, awards, and mandatory reconsiderations in NI in February 2024. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10 and percentages to the nearest 1%.
The DLA to PIP migration process for working age claimants was completed by the end of November 2019, therefore there are no further separate updates to reassessment outcome figures for working age claimants. DLA claimants turning 16 will continue to be reassessed for PIP.
Further information and more detailed statistics are available in the
accompanying Supplementary Tables workbook on the Department
for Communities (DfC) PIP Statistics website, which contains many
tables with breakdowns by normal rules and special rules for the end of
life (SREL). Tables are provided on registrations, clearances, clearance
times, award outcome, award rates, claims in payment, mandatory
reconsiderations, and award reviews. A number of these tables also
include time series information covering the last five years.
Glossary of Terms
Award - Claimant has been awarded PIP.
Clearance - DfC decision maker has determined whether the claimant should or should not be awarded PIP.
Clearance Time - The time between registration or referral to the Assessment Provider (AP) and clearance of the case.
Mandatory Reconsideration - Claimant wishes to dispute a decision made on their claim and requests DfC to reconsider the decision.
New Claim - A claim to PIP which does not originate from an existing DLA claim.
Normal Rules - Claims not being processed under ‘Special Rules for End of Life (SREL)’.
Registration - Claimant registers an application to claim PIP.
Special Rules for End of Life (SREL; previously SRTI) - A special fast-track PIP claim procedure for anyone approaching the end of their life due to a progressive disease and are not expected to live more than 12 months.
PIP Claims Process
End to End Process of PIP (Registration to Payment)
Analytics Division measure the full end-to-end process (from claim registration to decision/payment) and the Assessment Provider (AP) referral to end process (which excludes the time the claim is with the claimant). For more details please refer to the “About these statistics” section.
Registrations, Clearances and Awards
Clearances and awards statistics below do not include awards given as a result of mandatory reconsiderations or appeals. Claims in payment do include those who have been awarded PIP after the mandatory reconsideration or appeal.
During February 2024, there were 3,760 PIP claims registered and 4,700 claims cleared. Clearances include 60 (1%) ‘Special Rules for the End of Life’ (SREL) claims. (Full breakdowns of registration and clearance figures from March 2019 can be found in Tables 1 and 2 of the Supplementary Tables.)
New Claim Award Rates (excluding claims withdrawn by claimant before decision) during February 2024 are as follows:
All new claims made under Normal Rules - 58%
New claims made under Normal Rules that included a medical assessment - 62%
There were 205,840 Claims in Payment at February 2024. (Monthly breakdowns of figures for Claims in Payment since March 2019 can be found in Supplementary Table 6.)
Monthly breakdowns of figures for monthly Award Rates and Award Outcomes between March 2019 and February 2024 can be found in Tables 3 to 5 of the Supplementary Tables.
Figure 1: Cumulative Registrations, Clearances and Claims in Payment
Figure 2: Monthly Registrations, Clearances and Awards
Average Clearance Periods
Average clearance periods are reported in weeks and calculated from date of claim being registered on the PIP computer system until a decision is cleared. For claims cleared in February 2024 , the average clearance period from registration to clearance was 14 weeks. From referral to the assessment provider to clearance, the average clearance period was 10 weeks.
Figure 3 shows the average clearance periods for the time taken from registration to a decision being cleared, as well as from referral to assessment provider to a decision being cleared. (Monthly breakdowns of figures relating to clearance periods are also available in Table 3 in the Supplementary Tables.)
Figure 3: Average (median) Clearance Period (weeks), Claims Cleared by Month
Characteristics of Claims
There are currently 205,840 PIP claims in payment (on 29 February 2024).
42% of these claims in payment are awarded the enhanced rate for both components. Monthly breakdowns of awards for claims in payment from March 2019 to February 2024 can be found in Table 6 of the Supplementary Tables. Breakdowns of claims in payment by age, sex, Local Government District, and Assembly Area are available in Supplementary Tables 7 to 9.
Figure 4: Claims in Payment by Award Level (February 2024)
Medical conditions
45% (92,500) of claims in payment have a main disabling condition recorded under the highest medical category of ‘Psychiatric disorders (Mental Illness)’. Further details and breakdowns on PIP medical conditions are included in Tables 10 and 11 in the accompanying Supplementary Tables workbook.
Note, percentages are rounded to the nearest 1% and therefore may not sum to totals.
Figure 5: Main Disabling Condition Categories of Claims in Payment (February 2024)
Award Rates by Medical Category
In February 2024, claims made with the recorded medical category “Malignant disease (Cancers)” had the highest award rate. Highest award rates for medical categories in February 2024 are shown in Figure 6 below. Rates refer to only claims that included a medical assessment. Award rates for Medical conditions reported in fewer than 50 clearances in the month have been suppressed.
Figure 6: Medical Condition Categories with the highest award rates (February 2024)
Mandatory Reconsiderations
Claimants who wish to dispute their decision on their PIP claim can ask DfC to reconsider the decision. This is a ‘Mandatory Reconsideration’ (MR). Its purpose is to consider the grounds for the dispute and complete a review of the initial decision. MRs can arise for various reasons such as omitting to tell DfC about relevant evidence during the initial decision making process or not returning forms required as part of the claim. MRs can also be instigated by the Department. A MR must be completed before an appeal is made and lodged with The Appeals Service.
Main points in MRs are as follows:
In February 2024, 1,050 MRs had been registered.
There were 810 MRs cleared in February 2024 (excluding withdrawn / cancelled MRs).
For MRs cleared in February 2024, the average time to process MRs from registration to clearance was 96 calendar days.
During February 2024, 67% of mandatory reconsiderations resulted in no change to the award.
Figure 7 below provides monthly information between March 2019 and February 2024 for MR registrations and clearances (including withdrawn/cancelled MRs).
(Further breakdowns and figures relating to Mandatory Reconsiderations between March 2019 and February 2024 are included in Tables 12 and 13 of the Supplementary Tables.)
Figure 7: Reconsiderations by Month: Registrations and Clearances
Figure 8: Mandatory Reconsiderations Outcomes (February 2024)
New Decision - Award Changed: The Reconsideration instigated by the Claimant or Department has been completed and a conclusion is recorded which indicates that there has been a new decision issued and the award has been changed.
New Decision - Award Unchanged: The Reconsideration instigated by the Claimant or Department has been completed and a conclusion is recorded which indicates that there has been a new decision issued but the award remains unchanged.
About These Statistics
PIP was introduced in NI on 20th June 2016 for all new claims and where the award period for DLA had come to an end. From December 2016, the main reassessment of all existing working age DLA claims began with claimants selected at random. This process was completed in November 2019.
This quarterly summary contains statistics on PIP registrations, clearances, awards, numbers of claims in payment and mandatory reconsiderations for the last five years in Northern Ireland. All figures are rounded to the nearest 10 and as a result may not sum to stated totals.
PIP figures contained within the publication and supplementary tables are subject to scheduled revisions. This is to account for retrospective actions on the PIP Computer System (PIPCS). These revisions are performed in accordance with T3.9 of the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Statistics.
‘Monthly claims in payment’ refers to the number of PIP claims in payment on the last day of the month. Any figures relating to claims in payment will include claims which may have been changed as a result of a mandatory reconsideration or appeal. Figures relating to registrations, clearances and award rates are based on the initial decision and do not take account of any awards changed as a result of mandatory reconsiderations or appeal.
Data Quality Summary
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You are welcome to contact usdirectly with any comments about how we meet these standards - please fill in our user consultation survey or email us at analyticsdivision@communties-ni.gov.uk. Alternatively, you can contact OSR via email at regulaion@statistics.gov.uk or through the OSR website.
Data source and supplier: Data from the PIPCS are transferred to the PIP Atomic Data Store held by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). A suite of data tables, representing a 100% population of PIP claimants with a postcode in Northern Ireland, are supplied to the Department for Communities (DfC) by DWP using approved high secure transfers. For quality management, routine checks and measures include: checks on files received that names, sizes and figures contained within are as expected; any variations are investigated and if necessary data suppliers are contacted; Analytics Division Database Management Team remove personal or sensitive variables before loading files onto a restricted access secure server database for use by internal analysts; DWP will inform DfC if there are any changes or issues with the PIPCS and vice versa.
Limitations and other issues: Although analysts in DfC receive a large suite of data tables on a monthly basis from DWP, they do not have access to all data tables relating to PIP held by DWP due to the large volumes of data created by the PIPCS. This can limit the information that DfC analysts can create for use regarding PIP statistics. In some circumstances, DfC will request particular information to be extracted by DWP analysts where appropriate and possible. Errors may occasionally arise due to IT system errors or human error.
Creation of data tables for analytical and statistical purposes: Data arrives with DfC in structures that do not provide immediate insight to PIP figures in Northern Ireland. In order to create meaningful material for analysis and reporting, information must be collated from multiple variables across the various tables supplied and connected using unique linking variables. Further details on the creation of data tables and data quality can be found in the ‘Data Quality and Methodology’ webpage.
Mandatory Reconsiderations
The Department commenced an administrative exercise on 28th June 2018 to review all current PIP claims to check if customers are eligible for more support as a result of two Upper Tier Tribunal judgements in Great Britain. The outcomes from the review exercise are captured under both the new claims and the reassessed DLA reconsiderations categories. As the review exercise relates only to the application of these two judgements it resulted in higher rates of ‘no change to the award’. Consequently this leads to a higher overall proportion of mandatory reconsiderations resulting in ‘no change to the award’.
Revisions to Publication
If users wish to obtain statistical breakdowns of PIP figures for Northern Ireland that are not included in the current publication, please email DfC Analytics Division, with the Subject Line ‘Personal Independence Payment Statistics’.
May 2024 - From the February 2024 release (published May 2024), Northern Ireland PIP Statistics Quarterly webpage and the accompanying Supplementary Tables document have been streamlined to provide clearer and more user-friendly breakdowns of PIP statistics. In the HTML webpage, figures are provided for the latest available month’s data. Historical information is limited to five years, resulting in the removal of figures calculated using periods since roll-out of PIP (June 2016). In the Supplementary Tables document, contents repeated across multiple tables have been removed, monthly breakdowns in time series tables have been limited to five years, and breakdowns by Reassessment from DLA/New Claim have been removed as the migration of DLA working age claims to PIP was completed in November 2019.
February 2020 - The reassessment from DLA to PIP for working age claimants was completed in November 2019. The final publication providing information on working age reassessment outcomes can be viewed in the PIP November 2019 release (published February 2020).
DfC endeavour to provide the most relevant statistics in this published bulletin and the accompanying supplementary tables. As such, both undergo changes to content and design periodically. Details are provided in the ‘PIP statistics - changes to published statistics’ webpage.
Feedback
We would appreciate if you completed a short questionnaire to give us your views on the publication. Please use the online PIP Statistics User Consultation.
Further Information
For more information on PIP statistics, including detailed tables, please visit the DfC PIP Statistics Webpage.
Alternatively, email DfC Analytics Division.
For more information on PIP in general, please visit the NI Direct PIP webpage.
To view PIP statistics for Great Britain, please visit the Department for Work and Pensions PIP statistics webpage.
National Statistics (accredited official statistics) statement
National Statistics are accredited official statistics. These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) in October 2021. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’. Further information is available on the explanation web page on the OSR website. Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.