Timms Review update announces workshops to be held on PIP reform

The Timms Review will hold a series of workshops with disabled people and people with long-term health conditions across the UK in September and October as it begins to develop recommendations for reform of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) system.

In an update published today, the review’s three co-chairs Sir Stephen Timms MP, Sharon Brennan and Dr Clenton Farquharson CBE have written a letter outlining the next phase of the review would focus on developing and testing proposals for a future PIP system.

READ MORE: ‘Reforming Disability Confident is welcome – but without culture change it will still fall short’

The workshops will take place across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and are intended to “help shape, test and refine the Review’s emerging recommendations.”

The co-chairs said they did not expect participants to agree on every issue, arguing that different experiences would help the steering group develop recommendations that were “fair, balanced and grounded in real lives”.

The sessions will be co-hosted with selected deaf and disabled people’s organisations and charities based within each region where workshops are being held. The co-chairs promise the review to provide feedback on what was taken forward from the discussions and what was not.

The update marks the latest stage of the review, which was established to consider how PIP should work in the future and is being conducted through a co-production process involving disabled people.

Its interim report, published last month, concluded from the wide range of evidence received that “while PIP remains a vital source of financial support, the current system is not consistently delivering its purpose.”

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The report found widespread concerns about the assessment and decision-making process, as the review’s co-chairs said that evidence gathered showed too many people describing assessment and decision-making processes as stressful, dehumanising and difficult to trust.

The update letter also highlighted the importance of PIP to disabled people’s independence and ability to meet the additional costs of disability.

“The purpose of this Review is not simply to improve the assessment process,” they said. “It is to ensure that PIP is fair, accessible and fit for disabled people.”

The review is continuing to analyse responses to the call for evidence, alongside feedback from more than 130 “Workshop in a Box” sessions run by organisations and groups across the UK.

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The co-chairs also outlined that they are working with the National Centre for Social Research on a nationally representative survey of working-age disabled people, intended to provide quantitative evidence alongside the lived experience and evidence gathered through the review’s other engagement work.

The update stated that the steering group will spend the coming months refining its proposals with disabled people before submitting its final report to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions this autumn.

You can read the letter in full here.

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