I had 5 discretionary extensions for my review in total.
My award end date originally due to end mid July this year, & I was sent my review in November 2025. It was miss-delivered by Royal Mail to an address around 1/4 mile away to an elderly gentlemans house, & it was his very apologetic daughter who had called in to check on him who had found the opened review among other papers of his own he'd put to one side, & she had been tidying for him & come across the review forms.
By the time she brought them to me I only had 8 days to the due back date.
So rang, explained and got 1st extension, but the advisor on phone extended to 26th December 2025.
After the call a couple of days later I started to worry about it getting there on time with Christmas Post, as well as thinking why on earth would they give me a date thats Boxing Day??? - but mine is not to reason why.
They understood my concern and extended to late January 2026.
Then as was getting help from Age Concern to complete the AR1, but they were overwhelmed with people needing help and though could help me, I was going to have to wait 2 weeks.
Due to my conditions I'm not able to complete the form in one go so needed longer.
I rang PIP helpline, this time the advisor said I would need to speak to a case manager to extend.
Case manager really helpful, understood completely and extended for another month, and said if I needed a further extension just to ring back.
I did need another extension as the guy from Age Concern went off sick halfway through helping me complete my AR1, so I needed more time, as he was halfway through, & needed him back to work to complete.
Rang PIP helpline again, and they were happy to extend again.
Then last extension purely as was awaiting consultants letter on the effects of one of my conditions, I rang and asked if the date due back could be extended a further 14 days which they did, but I got it back to them within a few days, so it was back to PIP end of May this year, where its still sitting merrily in its digital queue batch awaiting its electronic batch transfer to assesment company. (Over 5 months and counting).
My award had already been extended for a year to July 2027 by this time anyway, as so many other thousands have.
I dont feel that I would have been granted all those extensions if PIP did not have an almost catastrophic backlog, & certainly due to current reported and those not required to be reported backlogs I feel the very much needed discretionary extensions were given as it made one less review entering the queue.
My problems with the return of the review were exceptional and reasons backed up, and most people wont probably need so many extensions, but they certainly do listen and can give more than one extension for sure.
