PIP assessment report Advice

Hi Sophie1985

If you have not had your decision letter, you could write to the decision maker and challenge what the assessor has said. (and anything else that you feel needs challenging. However, only challenge things that will have an influence on points that you are hoping to gain.

If you have had your decision letter then you would need to put in for a mandatory reconsideration and you would need to ring up and say this is what you are going to do.

I don't know exactly what you wrote in your original form, or what you said to the assessor, but just make sure that it is clear that you can walk no more than 15 meters in total - or I can see them saying you walk 15 meters somewhere and then 15 metres back. (I'm not saying you said this - just that it could be open to interpretation) Also be clear about when the pain starts, how quickly it increases, and the severity of it. What happens if you did walk 15 meters, would you then have to sit down for an hour? What would you have to do for the pain, and how quickly would it decreases?

Remember - they don't know you and the assessor is just offering an opinion. It's aggravating, but just try to give as clear a picture as you can.

BIS

Sophie

Just to add to BIS's advice.

It appears that both the assessor and Decision Maker are considering a longer distance as you have indicated that you could continue walking after a rest, so one of the areas you need to concentrate on is the rest period that you mention, the law requires that you need to be able to complete an activity

"in a reasonable time period no more than twice as long as a person without a physical or mental health condition would take to carry out the activity."

Normal walking speed is about 72m/minute so a healthy person would take about 25 seconds to walk 30m, taking even just a one minute rest you have assessed yourself as needing to take at least 85 seconds and possibly longer to cover the same distance.

Gordon

Sophie

I'm sorry, I should have read your post better but my summation of what the DWP are thinking I believe to still be correct.

So, you need to challenge the idea that you can continue walking after the 15m, other things to consider.

You are not required to walk pain free but any pain that restricts the distance that you can walk should be taken into account.

Specifically for the Moving Around activity, if you are able to walk but you are in severe pain when doing so, then you can argue that your walking is not to a necessary standard and should be disregarded.

The legal test requires you to stand and then move (walk), so if you have problems getting up then you should document these as well.

If you walk slowly then it must take you at least twice the time to cover the distance as a healthy person would, this could be down to the speed of your walking but could also be the result of having to stop.

You must be able to repeat the distance, so if you could walk it once but not then be able to walk it again within a reasonable timescale then you should be classed as unable to repeat the activity.

I'm afraid I can't tell you how to show your walking is more restricted but things you need to think about is what you can't do, for example what can you walk in your house, how far is the toilet from where you normally sit, things that will count against you are any trips that you make outside, so for example, how do you do your shopping?

You must be able to walk the distance you can, reliably and on the majority of days, both these terms are defined in the PIP Claim guide

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

So you need to explain what you can, how you are limited and why.

Gordon