What Does 'Plan & Follow A Journey' mean?

stampcoverman

The Pip Claim guide is based on the legal definitions for each activity, the DWP guidance to assessors, PIP Case law as it becomes available and three years of advising claimants on how the benefit is operated.

The PIP Mobility activities are one of the few areas where the new benefit follows DLA where the Lower rate was awarded for problems with planning, going out and following a route due to mental health or cognitive issues and the Higher rate was awarded for physical problems that limited the distance that a claimant could walk and sensory issues.

It Is your claim and only you profit or lose by it's success so it is important that you fill out the PIP2 as you feel is most appropriate to your limitations, our role is to try and explain the process and the way that claimants can score points, so you can follow or ignore our advice as you see fit, we won't take offence.

Gordon

stampcoverman

You need to score a total of 12 points across both of the two mobility activities, this could be achieved for a variety of reasons and conditions and to correct you, it is metres not feet

If you are saying that you cannot leave the house for physical reasons but this is not due to your having problems with the distance you can walk, then I think you will struggle to score points, but if this is the case then you have nothing to lose by arguing your case and I would be more than happy to be proved wrong by your being awarded points.

I suspect that those members trying to score points for PIP Mobility might disagree that the test is biased towards mental health issues.

Gordon

stampcoverman

There are two reasons that we are confident that our view of the Going Out activity is correct.

First the DWP guidance states for this activity;

This activity was designed to assess the barriers claimants may face that are associated with mental, cognitive or sensory ability.

I'll stress that the guidance is not law and we don't always agree with it but this is a case where we have consistently seen claimants fail to score points for this activity where the underlying cause of their problems has been physical, this has been supported at Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal.

Looking at your latest post. First of all I did say that sensory issues are included in one of my earlier posts.

If you are saying that your physical problems mean that your sight is so restricted that you cannot reliably follow a route then it may be possible for to score point in this activity, however, I think that you will still struggle.

Decision Makers are not medially trained and often lack imagination when dealing with issues that do not follow the norm. I think it likely that they will see sensory problems as referring to the blind or the deaf, so you will need to explain detail how you are restricted and the similarity of your problems to those that a blind person might experience. Even then it may be that you would only receive points at appeal, where those scoring you can actually see you and ask you about your difficulties.

I am of course more than happy to be proved wrong.

Gordon