You could be waiting ten weeks longer for a PIP assessment, depending on which part of England and Wales you live in, figures released by the DWP reveal.
Earlier this week we highlighted a report that showed that 40% of health assessors drop-out during training and 52% of those that start work leave within the first year.
The huge turnover means that there is always a shortage of assessors. This shortage is more acute in some areas than others.
The figures below, taken from DWP statistics for October 2025, show that new claimants in the South West of England wait an average of six weeks for an assessment to be completed and returned, after their case is referred to Serco.
On the other hand, new claimants in London wait an average of 16 weeks for the process to be completed, almost three times as long.
Only last month, we directed readers to a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) which warned that ““It is unacceptable how long some PIP claimants are having to wait for their claims to be processed, which can cause them to get into debt and push them into poverty.”
The PAC said that the DWP aimed to process 75% of claims within 75 days. Yet in London, it takes an average of 112 days just for the assessment to be carried out, aside from the processes carried out by the DWP.
Below, we give the median number of weeks for October 2025 from referral to assessment provider to the return of the completed PIP assessment to the DWP.
The DWP divide PIP into regions for the purposes of statistics that do not absolutely match the areas covered by the different assessment companies. As a result, the East of England is divided between three separate providers.
South West, Serco: 6 weeks
East Midlands, Capita: 7 weeks
Wales, Capita: 7 weeks
West Midlands, Capita: 7 weeks
North East, Maximus: 7 weeks
North West, Maximus: 7 weeks
Yorkshire and the Humber, Maximus: 7 weeks
South East, Ingeus: 11 weeks
London, Ingeus: 16 weeks
East of England, split between Ingeus, Serco, Capita: 13 weeks
In fact, the situation may now be even worse than these figures suggest, because the DWP have been diverting staff away from new claims in order to reduce the backlog of PIP reassessments, so the waiting times may well have increased.
In addition, from April 2026, the proportion of face-to-face assessments is to be increased to 30% for both PIP and the WCA, rising from lows of 6% for PIP in 2024 and 13% for the WCA.
Face-to-face assessments use up more staff time than telephone assessments, so again run the risk of increasing waiting times.
UPDATE: please note, the DWP do not provide statistics for Northern Ireland, where benefits are administered by the Department for Communities, or for Scotland where PIP has been replaced by ADP.
