Plan and follow the route of a journey

David wrote: I have hit a problem with my son's PIP mobility. He drives 4 days per week to his place of work so he has not been awarded any points for this activity. My argument is that he did not plan this route, he follows a route that was planned for him. He was taught the route by someone driving him there several times, and then accompanying him several times when he drove the route until he was happy to do it on his own. Is the "planning" part of this descriptor irrelevant?
It has been acknowledge elsewhere in the assessment that he has a cognitive impairment due to a stroke.

Welcome to the forum

I'll admit I'm splitting hairs on this but a couple of points;

- based on your post your son is following a route and not planning it

- being taught a route is not planning it

You need to take these activities literally when describing the problems has with them. So planning a route means your son being given a starting point and a destination and being able to, with the use of appropriate maps or other aids to be able to create a route between the two. It does not have to be the most efficient route but it does need to be a reasonable route.

He must be able to do this reliably and on the majority of days not to score points for this. In this context;

Safely - if your son's route included crossing main roads at places other than designated crossing points you can be argue that the route does not meet this requirement

To a necessary and appropriate standard - if the route that your son calculates would take far longer than it would reasonably be expected to take, or he includes sections of walking where it would be more reasonable to use Public Transport.

Repeatedly - Even if he could plan a route from A to B could he then plan a route from B to C, what about from B to A.

In a timely manner - If it would take him more than twice the maximum time that an able bodied person would take to plan the same route, them he should be considered as unable to plan a route.

Have a look at the PIP Claim guide for more details.

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/pip

Gordon

mommaduck wrote: Just a quick question Gordon,

David states that his son drives to work. Would one be classed as being able to plan a route driving if you could only do this using a SatNav? Would this come under an orientation aid?

And if you repeatedly used the same route but each time you did so you had to repeatedly use a SatNav as yo could not remember the route without doing so. How would that be classed?

OK, I know I am taking this literally, but I believe this would still be classed as following a route and not planning it, the two are separate activities as far as PIP is concerned.

We have asked the question, the DWP guidance refers to specialised navigation devices but this does not appear to include Sat Navs. I would certainly argue that using one does not constitute planning a route as all that is required is the destination, the claimant is not required to perform any other action than entering this correctly into the device, there is no planning on their part, even if a route was required between A and B, this still only required the claimant to enter two pieces of information.

Gordon