Change of circumstances

I currently get standard rate care and mobility PIP, down from high rate DLA for both. I have now been diagnosed with glaucoma, with significant damage to my optic nerves, and wonder if I should tell the dwp of this change. I am worried that they might reduce my money even more - advice please

Hi Mary,

Claimants are supposed to report any/all changes of circumstances to DWP. In practice, they are far more interested in things that will allow them to reduce or stop payments than in ones that mean they need to pay out more!

Your first step should be to have a look at our PIP self-assessment and score yourself harshly to see if you might now score enough points to increase your award. If not, it is up to you whether you want to notify DWP now or wait until your next scheduled reassessment. Don't forget that you must have had the problem for 3 months before you initiate the claim and they must be expected to continue for at least a further 9 months.

Notifying a change of circumstances will trigger a complete reassessment with a PIP2 form to complete and possibly a face2face assessment.

You might want to bookmark/favourite this on your web browser now so that you find it easily in future. This will allow you to return with further questions/comments without having to start a new topic each time. It helps us enormously when everything relating to the same claim is kept in one place - and I hope you will find it useful too