PIP Review Launches Toolkit to Hear From More Disabled People

Around four million people in Great Britain receive Personal Independence Payment. It is a non-means tested benefit designed to help with the extra costs of living with a disability or long term health condition. The government launched a formal review of PIP in autumn 2025, and it is not a small undertaking, the benefit's caseload has grown sharply, the conditions it supports have shifted, and the system has never been comprehensively reviewed since it replaced Disability Living Allowance in 2013.

The Timms Review named after Sir Stephen Timms, the Minister for Social Security and Disability who is co-chairing it closed its public call for evidence on 28 May 2026. That process drew 38,000 responses. On 8 June, the DWP announced a new phase, a downloadable "Workshop in a Box" toolkit that lets charities, disabled people's organisations, and community groups run their own structured consultation sessions and submit findings directly to the review's steering group.

Second engagement phase

Formal public consultations, however well publicised, tend to reach people who are already confident engaging with government processes. Written submissions favour those with time, literacy support, and the energy to navigate official channels. For many disabled people, particularly those with severe conditions, cognitive impairments, or limited English, the standard call for evidence format is a genuine barrier.

Co-chair Sharon Brennan said the new method was designed to reach people who have "conversations that matter with the organisations that they most trust." Her point is that a community group, a local disability charity, or a drop in centre carries a kind of trust that a government website does not. The workshop format is intended to use that trust to gather views that would not otherwise make it into the review.

A small number of organisations have been approached by the DWP and offered financial support to run workshops specifically targeting marginalised or underrepresented communities. The government has not published a full list of those organisations.

The pack is structured around three themes. The first is the purpose of PIP, what the benefit is actually for, and whether recipients feel it reflects the real costs of living with their conditions. The second is the application process, which has been a sustained source of criticism from disability charities and claimants for years. Assessment processes, waiting times, the reliance on paper based evidence, and the distress caused by face to face assessments have all featured heavily in previous research. The third theme is decision making, how eligibility is determined, why so many decisions are overturned at appeal, and whether the criteria are understood by those applying.

Organisations are encouraged to adapt the materials for carers, advisors, and others who have relevant knowledge and experience of the system, not only PIP recipients themselves.

The wider review

The Workshop in a Box is one of six evidence strands feeding into the Timms Review. The others are, analysis of existing data and research, new quantitative survey research, expert evidence sessions and deliberative events. The steering group will use the combined findings to inform recommendations it expects to submit to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in autumn 2026. An interim report is expected before then.

The review is explicit that PIP will remain a non-means tested cash benefit. The government has committed to that. What is less settled is how eligibility should be determined, how the assessment process should work, and whether the current criteria still accurately reflect the conditions and circumstances of the people claiming it today.

Those questions carry significant political weight. The caseload growth in PIP driven partly by mental health conditions, neurodivergent conditions, and fluctuating health has become a central tension in welfare policy. The government faces competing pressure to control expenditure and to protect support for those who need it. The Timms Review is supposed to navigate that tension by grounding any changes in evidence gathered directly from disabled people.

Whether the workshop format, with a submission deadline of 17 July and an interim report due within months, leaves enough time to genuinely process and act on what organisations feed back remains to be seen.