How far can you walk DLA vs PIP B&W guidance

Harryb wrote: In the DLA guidance from Benefits & Work I seem to recall it stated that if you suffered pain as soon as you started to walk then under the question how far can you walk you would put zero (which I did although I can walk a fair way albeit with pain). For PIP the guidance is worded differently and perhaps not as clearly, words like reliably, repeatedly and safely are used but no reference to pain as there was before. Could you help to clarify this for me please ?

DLA specifically referenced pain through the phrase "severe discomfort", although I have seen this phrase used for PIP it is not specifically referenced in the legislation.

PIP still takes account of pain and similar factors, but the claimant needs to explain it in more detail.

First of all, none of the PIP activities are required to be done pain free, however, any pain that would limit the claimants ability to complete the activity should be taken into account, this might be explained through the use of;

Safely - the pain can be treated as causing harm to the claimant. For example; you can with some pain for 10m but after this the level of pain you have prevents you walking further

To a necessary and appropriate standard - if you cannot complete an activity or can only do elements because of the pain that results. For example; you can pull on clothing but pain in your fingers prevents you from buttoning a shirt or pulling a zip closed.

Repeatedly - you can perform an activity once, but cannot repeat it due to pain.

In a timely manner - Because of pain it takes you more than twice the maximum time that a healthy person would take to complete an activity. You can walk 50m but due to pain you have to stop every 10m for 5 minutes to allow the pain to subside. The total time it takes you to walk the 50m is more than twice what it would take a healthy person.

The general term for the above is "reliably", if you cannot reliably complete an activity you should score points

Also, you should take account of the phrase "on the majority of days". If you can complete an activity sometimes but on most occasions you cannot then you should score points.

So to summarise, you must be able to reliably complete an activity on the majority of days not to score points.

Gordon