• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Benefits and Poverty / Life in the PIP queue: Woman’s ‘wicked’ 14-month wait… just to be assessed
Mark Harper

Life in the PIP queue: Woman’s ‘wicked’ 14-month wait… just to be assessed

By John Pring on 21st February 2015 Category: Benefits and Poverty

Listen

A disabled woman has told how she has been forced to wait more than 14 months to be assessed for the government’s new disability benefit just days after a Tory minister praised his own performance in cutting waiting-times.

Hannah Wells, from Ascot, Berkshire, told Disability News Service (DNS) that she put in her application for personal independence payment (PIP) in November 2013, with her claim logged by Atos Healthcare early the following month.

It is the longest wait yet by a PIP claimant to be reported by DNS.

She has already had two assessments at the Atos centre in Reading cancelled this year – the first one in January 2015, and the second one this week – because of staff sickness.

And she has been told by Atos that she is “not the only one waiting for an assessment from 2013”.

Debt-collectors are now “knocking on the door”, she is unable to afford the healthy diet she needs (she has type one diabetes, among a number of health conditions), and she cannot afford to run her car or to move to more appropriate housing.

She is also unable to apply for other linked support from her local authority because she is not yet receiving PIP, and is surviving on out-of-work disability benefits, having been placed last November in the employment and support allowance support group, for those with the highest barriers to work.

Wells said: “The system is torturing disabled people who are severely dependant on what they are legally entitled to.

“I worked for more than 20 years and paid into the system. It is torture, making you jump through hoops to get what you are entitled to. It is absolutely wicked.

“It has left me financially crippled. My car is left rotting outside and there is nothing I can do.

“If I get my backdated PIP, I can pay off all the bills and get back to having a real life.”

She tried complaining to DWP, but was told there was nothing they could do to pressure Atos.

And now she fears that she will have to wait even longer, as a disabled friend who himself has been waiting more than six months for an assessment in Reading has been handed a date in April.

An Atos spokeswoman apologised for the latest cancellation but refused to comment on the wait of 14 months.

She said in a statement: “We are now conducting over 2,000 PIP assessments every day and people are being seen as swiftly as possible.”

A DWP spokesman said: “We apologise for the length of time Ms Wells has had to wait. Any PIP award agreed for Ms Wells following her assessment will be backdated.

“We have made significant progress in reducing waiting times.”

Mark Harper, the Conservative minister for disabled people, defended the PIP reforms when he gave evidence to the work and pensions select committee on 28 January.

He said the government had “made a lot of progress compared with where we were in the unacceptable period last summer”, although he said he was “not satisfied with where we are”.

He added: “When the prime minister asked me to do this job, he said this was the top priority for me to sort out, and I have said that consistently since, and it has been and I think we have made considerable process.

“We have hit the secretary of state’s ambition to get the process functioning now in the shape that is acceptable, but we still have more work to do.”

New DWP figures released just before the hearing showed that although the average waiting-time for a PIP assessment had fallen from 30 weeks to 14 weeks, one in 11 of those who had lodged a new PIP claim since the benefit’s launch in April 2013 was still waiting to be assessed, and had been waiting longer than 16 weeks.

Those figures suggested that just under 50,000 claimants had – like Hannah Wells – been waiting longer than 16 weeks for an assessment.

Harper declined to tell MPs on the committee the length of the current longest wait for an assessment.

Share this post:

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on RedditShare on LinkedIn

Tags: DWP Mark Harper PIP

A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Related

Government ignores warnings of new DWP deaths, and UN intervention, as MPs pass universal credit cuts bill
10th July 2025
Urgent letter from UN to Labour government warns: We think your cuts continue Tory attack on disability rights
10th July 2025
Race against time to secure DWP deaths evidence before parliament passes new benefit cuts bill
10th July 2025

Primary Sidebar

On the left of the image are multiple heads of different colours - white, aqua, red, light brown, and dark green - all grouped together, then the words ‘Campaign for Disability Justice. Sign up to support. #OpportunitySecurityRespect’
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Access

Latest Stories

Government ignores warnings of new DWP deaths, and UN intervention, as MPs pass universal credit cuts bill

Urgent letter from UN to Labour government warns: We think your cuts continue Tory attack on disability rights

Race against time to secure DWP deaths evidence before parliament passes new benefit cuts bill

‘Complete shift in thinking’ needed on education of disabled children, says ALLFIE

Minister ignored concerns from disabled advisers, months before publishing cuts bill

Frustration after government only issues partial ban on new floating bus stops

Report suggests five big ideas that could transform disabled people’s mobility

My new book shows exactly why we need the disability movement, says disabled author

‘Disastrous’ cuts bill that leaves legacy of distrust and distress ‘must be dropped’

Four disabled Labour MPs stand up to government over cuts to disability benefits

Advice and Information

Readspeaker
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Threads
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web