The DWP has paid out £32 million so far to PIP claimants who lost out because of legal errors by the department, according to an update released this week.
The DWP is currently trawling through millions of claims looking for people owed money after it lost two landmark legal cases and had to change its guidance to decision makers.
In a decision known as MH, it was found that the DWP had been misapplying the law in relation to psychological distress and following the route of a journey.
In RJ, the DWP was found to have got the law wrong in relation to safety and supervision.
Since June 2018, the DWP has been looking for claimants who are entitled to back-payments because their award was calculated wrongly due to these errors of law.
The review exercise was paused from the end of March 2020 because of coronavirus, but began again in October 2020.
The latest figures show that:
- around 890,000 cases have been cleared against the MH decision
- around 990,000 cases have been cleared against the RJ decision
Approximately 6,600 payments have been made; of which:
- around 3,600 arrears payments have been made from the application of the MH decision alone
- around 3,000 arrears payments have been made from the application of the RJ decision alone
- less than 100 arrears payments have been made from the application of both decisions simultaneously
The total amount of arrears payments the department has paid out is around £32million. Of this:
- £18million has been paid from the application of the MH decision alone
- £14million has been paid from the application of the RJ decision alone
- less than £1 million has been paid from the application of both decisions
You can read the full report: PIP administrative exercise: progress on cases cleared, at 17 January 2021.
