People risk being pushed into poverty by DWP’s ‘unacceptable’ poor service

A new report on the DWP, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is calling out the unacceptable waits some people face for their Personal Independent Payment (PIP) to be processed, which can cause them to get into debt and push them into poverty.

The report cites examples of people waiting over a year for their PIP claims to be processed. The DWP informed the PAC’s inquiry that this evidence is not reflected in its statistics, while acknowledging it as a situation that needs to be addressed.

The Government said that it aims to process three-quarters of new PIP claims within 75 working days, but only a little over half of these claims were processed within this timeframe in ’24-’25.

The DWP aims to streamline the claims process by testing its online application in a few postcodes, following its announcement three years ago to the PAC that it intended to process up to 20% of PIP claims using this new service by 2026.

It now says that it believes it can reach this target by 2029. This is far too long for claimants to have to wait for improvements, and the DWP must now say when more PIP claimants can expect a better service.

The PAC is also continuing to highlight the potentially adverse impact of DWP’s cuts to the time spent in a first meeting between a Universal Credit claimant and their work coach, from 50 minutes to half an hour.

The Government has now acknowledged it does not have quantitative evidence on the impact of this change, with the PAC noting that no feedback had been gathered from claimants.

The DWP has said there is flexibility in the schedule of work coaches (the shortage of which PAC has already found the Government to have been complacent about) to manage their meeting times and lengths. The report warns that without some mitigating action from the Government, claimants with more complex needs may not get the support they need.

The PAC is further questioning recent reforms shifting responsibility for adult skills from the Department for Education (DfE) to the DWP. These changes mean DWP will need to set up its new jobs and careers service by October 2026, with careers advice to be provided by its own staff.

With the PAC having previously raised concerns on the reduction of support for benefit claimants driven by a shortage of work coaches, the report warns that persistently stretched jobcentres combined with this tight timetable for integration by October, could make it difficult for the DWP to absorb its new responsibilities and provide an effective and joined-up jobs, careers and skills offer.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “When elected as Chair of the PAC, I promised to return to areas of weakness in Government policy delivery identified in our scrutiny that were not improving quickly enough.

“One of those areas is the treatment by the DWP of disability benefits claimants, who, our report finds, may now expect a reliably poor service from the Department. Our Committee received reassurances three years ago that improvements would have manifested by now; we are now told that they are a further three years off. This is simply not good enough for our constituents, who we know risk being pushed into debt or poverty by a Department unresponsive to their needs.

“The summer of last year was consumed by debate around proposed changes to the benefits system, with the Government insisting changes to PIP would be mitigated by support for disabled people and people with long-term conditions to get back into work.

“Our report exposes the incoherence with which the Government made these arguments, while cutting the all-important support provided by work coaches which could help those same people access the labour market.

“Our focus will remain trained on what mitigating action will be taken by DWP on this issue, as well as its over.”