What’s happening with PIP?

A simple graphic: green-blue on the left graduates to more baby blue on the right. Overlaying the ombre background, the words ‘What's happening’ appear in bold black text, arced over smaller black text that says, ‘with PIP?’. Equal Lives’ logo sits at the bottom left.

Earlier this year, we wrote a few posts about the government’s plans to change how benefits work for Disabled people. We explained that Personal Independence Payment (PIP) hasn't changed yet, but a review is underway to find out what people think of how it works now. This review is called the Timms Review, named after the government minister overseeing it.

What’s happening with the Timms Review?

The Timms Review have created a number of recommendations and proposals for how PIP might change in future. These recommendations are based on the feedback of more than 38,000 people who answered a survey telling the Review what does and doesn’t work for them under the current PIP rules and processes.

These recommendations are not final, however. They are being shared with groups of people to check whether they cover all of the issues raised by the original survey. This is being done via a series of co-produced online and in-person workshops. Equal Lives were invited to provide co-hosts for the East of England online workshop because of our local knowledge.

What happens at the workshops?

The workshops gave opportunities for participants to say what they thought about each of the recommendations. They were split into small groups, so everyone got the chance to contribute.

The Equal Lives staff who attended the East of England online workshop were really pleased with the range of lived experience represented by the participants. There were Disabled individuals, family members and carers, and professionals from care and support services. Disabled participants had a range of disabilities, including neurodivergent, fluctuating and deteriorating conditions. Each participant had their own perspective on the recommendations, which meant that they thought about them in different ways. This was reassuring to us as a Disabled People’s Organisation because it meant that lots of important points were raised about how they might work, and what concerns people had about them.

What were the recommendations?

The recommendations are not finalised and published, so we can’t share them yet. In general, though, they seemed good. They appeared to address problems people have at the moment with timescales, accessibility of the application and appeal processes, and inappropriate or apparently unfair medical assessments.

What we most liked was how the participants really took time to think about the details of each recommendation. They pointed out areas where an idea may affect different groups of people positively or negatively, depending on their health conditions, access requirements or other factors.

What happens now?

Public Service Consultants (PSC) and the West of England Centre for Independent Living (WECIL), the organisations arranging and delivering the workshops on behalf of the Timms Review steering group, will collect the feedback from all of the sessions. They will send this to the Timms Review committee to think about when they create their final report.

Although we do not know what the final report will contain, we are reassured that much of the feedback from Disabled people that the Timms Review will have received echoes the concerns and challenges which our members tell us about with the current system.

The final report is expected to be published early in 2027. When this happens, we will know more about if and when PIP will change. PIP will not change until after this report is released. Equal Lives will continue to share any updates to this process as we learn about them.

Written by Natalie, Equal Lives' Advocacy Manager