PIP assessment

Petlover

As you say, driving is not part of the PIP tests but assessors will make some assumptions because of your driving, some are reasonable, others not so.

So claimants need a reasonable level of cognitive ability to drive and would likely be able to follow a route, they will also be expected to have good grip. Assessors do make assumptions about a claimants ability to walk, hence the manual/automatic questions, your response would argue against this.

Gordon

Petlover

Although it is only one point on the Decision Letter in reality you may well need to score two points for an enhanced award. and this will mean scoring higher for one of the activities that you scored for or scoring in one that you did not actually score, neither will be as easy as it may seem.

So I would suggest you first of all go back to the PIP Claim guide to see whether you can realistically score the extra points you need.

If you think that you can then the next thing to consider is the risk of an MR, although you can ask them to only look at one component, the DWP are going to look at the whole award and can add or remove points, leave the award as is, increase it or reduce it and even remove it.

In reality it is very unusual for an MR to result in fewer points but it does happen and you need to figure this in to your decision.

The first stage to challenging a Decision is for you to request a Mandatory Reconsideration, this needs to be done in writing to the DWP, within one month of the Decision, to the office that dealt with your claim, have a look at our PIP MR & Appeal guide for details of the process, the PIP area also has template letters that you can use to make the request with.

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/pip

Gordon