How will changes to personal independence payment and other benefits affect you?

Millions of people will see their health and disability benefits such as PIP cut, as the government aims to save more than £5bn a year by the end of the decade. It’s part of the government’s welfare changes aimed at reducing the benefits bill and at helping sick and disabled people get back into work.

The proposals represent the most significant overhaul of disability benefits in a generation. While the changes apply only to England and Wales, they will have knock-on effects for Scotland and Northern Ireland. So how will the government’s changes to PIP and disability benefits affect you?

What’s on this page?

• What’s the personal independence payments news?
• What is PIP, what are the rates and who can get it?
• What happens to PIP when I reach state pension age?
• How is eligibility for PIP currently assessed?
• What change is the DWP making on PIP assessments?
• How will this affect me?
• What about other changes to sickness and disability benefits?
• Impact of PIP changes on Scotland and Northern Ireland’s disability benefits
• I’m worried about the changes. What can I do?

What’s the personal independence payments news?

Under the government’s proposed welfare shake-up, the main changes are as follows:

• Personal independence payment (PIP) eligibility will be tightened from November 2026. This will affect new applications but also existing claimants when they are reassessed.
• Universal credit rates will be rebalanced to incentivise work. The standard allowance rate will rise by £7 a week from April 2026. But the health element will be frozen at £97 a week for existing claimants until 2029/30. It will fall to £50 a week by 2026/2027 for new claims.  
• The work capability assessment, used to determine your ability to work and the level of universal credit you should get, will be scrapped in 2028. Instead, entitlement to the health element of Universal Credit will be determined by PIP eligibility.
• A new “right to try” work guarantee will be introduced by the end of 2025. By removing the risk of losing benefits if a job isn’t right, the idea is to make it easier for disabled and long-term sick people to get back into employment. 

Eduin Latimer, a research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says there will be winners and losers. “Some people will see their benefits increase, but many could lose their financial support altogether.”

While the changes will affect all areas of disability benefits, Louise Murphy, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, says the changes to PIP eligibility will hit the hardest. “Tightening PIP eligibility is the biggest change and the one that will save the most money. The largest group receiving PIP are people aged 50-plus.”

The changes are set out in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Pathways to Work green paper. The paper is in consultation stage until 30 June 2025. MPs will then debate the proposals in parliament before legislation is finalised. So there’s still a chance that things could change.

What is PIP, what are the rates and who can get it?

PIP is a working age benefit paid in England and Wales to people who have a long-term physical or mental health condition that makes it difficult to complete everyday tasks or to get out and about. PIP is not means-tested. Instead, the amount you receive is determined by the amount of help you need.

There are two elements:

• Daily living: If you need help with everyday tasks, such as preparing food or going to the toilet.
• Mobility: If you need help getting around inside or outside.

Current weekly rates are:

• £72.65 (lower rate) for daily living
• £108.55 (higher rate) for daily living  
• £28.70 (lower rate) for mobility
• £75.75 (higher rate) for mobility  

Disability living allowance (DLA) is being replaced by PIP for most adults.

What happens to PIP when I reach state pension age?

While PIP is mainly a disability benefit for those under the state pension age, if you were already getting PIP, your claim can continue when you start receiving your state pension. Similarly, you may be able to claim PIP after you reach state pension age, provided you have claimed it before and you were eligible for it in the year before you reached state pension age.

If these don’t apply and you’ve already reached state pension age and you need extra help because of disability, you should claim attendance allowance instead.

How is eligibility for PIP currently assessed?

Eligibility for PIP and the rate that is paid is determined by a health questionnaire (PIP 2 evidence form). This assesses your ability to carry out 10 different daily living activities, such as preparing food, washing, and dressing, and two mobility activities, which are planning and following the route of a journey, and being able to stand and move.

Points are awarded based on what you are able to do. For example, for washing and bathing, you score 2 points if you need supervision or prompting to be able to wash your body, or if you need assistance to wash your hair or your body below the waist.

You score four points if you need assistance to wash your upper body and eight points if you need someone to wash your entire body. Under the current system, you need to score at least eight across the 10 activities to qualify for PIP. If you score 12 or more it’s paid at the higher rate.

What change is the DWP making on PIP assessments?

Under the DWP’s proposed changes from November 2026, a further condition is added to the daily living component. To qualify for PIP, at least one of the 10 activities of daily living must score a minimum of four points.

Currently, someone who needs assistance to wash their hair or body below the waist, or to get in or out of a bath or shower, and needs assistance to dress or undress their lower body, and also needs prompting to be able to prepare or cook a simple meal, and also needs supervision or prompting to manage their toilet needs, would just meet the threshold for PIP daily living component (though only if all of these apply, unless they need help in other areas as well). But under the proposed changes they would not be eligible.

The change applies to new and existing claimants, with the Resolution Foundation estimating that, for the government to achieve its £5bn-a-year saving, between 800,000 and 1.2 million people could end up losing their entitlement to the daily living component PIP by 2029-30.

The eligibility for the mobility component of PIP does not change.

How will this affect me?

For anyone receiving PIP, the changes to the assessment could affect your eligibility to this benefit. “If you don’t score at least four points in any of the daily living activities, you will lose your PIP entitlement,” explains Halide Kalfaoglu, benefits expert at charity Turn2us.

The Resolution Foundation says that the changes are more likely to affect older claimants. It estimates that people scoring 21 points or more are least likely to be affected, since it’s difficult to score this high unless you score at least four points in at least one of the daily living activities.

Only 10 per cent of PIP claimants who are over 50 were awarded 21 or more points, compared with 25% of 20-29-year-olds. On average, only 14% of claimants score 21 or more points, with people with learning disabilities the most likely to score that high.

People with back pain, arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, chronic pain syndrome, lung diseases, depression and anxiety, epilepsy and cancer are among the least likely to score 21 points or more. That suggests that people with these conditions may be more likely to lose their eligibility for PIP.

What about other changes to sickness and disability benefits?

If you lose your eligibility for PIP, you could also lose the health element of universal credit when the work capability assessment is scrapped in 2028. The changes could affect your entitlement to carer’s allowance too. This can be paid if you’re looking after someone who is getting a sickness or disability benefit such as PIP or attendance allowance. If their entitlement ends, so could your carer’s allowance.

Incapacity benefits under universal credit are also changing. These will be frozen in cash terms for existing claimants at £97 per week from April next year, so will not increase in line with inflation until 2029/30. The amount will be reduced to £50 per week in 2026/2027 for new claimants, which will then be frozen.

Impact of PIP changes on Scotland and Northern Ireland’s disability benefits

The proposed changes only apply to England and Wales, but they could have a knock-on effect north of the border. As a result of its devolved powers, Scotland has replaced PIP with adult disability payment (ADP), a similar benefit but intended to be fairer and offer more dignity to claimants.

While Scotland sets its own rules on eligibility, funding is determined by the UK government. “If spending on PIP decreases, the funding provided to the Scottish government through the block grant will also be reduced proportionally,” says Kalfaoglu.

The Scottish government can decide how to cover this shortfall. It would have to choose between replicating the changes in England or Wales or redirecting funding from other areas of spending. In Northern Ireland, welfare policy is devolved and administered by the Department for Communities, but primarily funded by the UK government.

In practice the benefits and rates are the same as in England and Wales, although there have been some differences. For example, the devolved department put in place some additional support for people affected by the transition from disability living allowance to personal independence payments, and for people suffering from injuries relating to the Northern Ireland Conflict.

I’m worried about the changes. What can I do?

The PIP eligibility changes are not yet confirmed, but if they happen, they will start to come into effect in November 2026. The Resolution Foundation’s Murphy says it will take time to roll out eligibility reassessments.

“No one will lose income overnight,” she says. “Reassessments take place every two to five years so the effects of the changes will be gradual. All the uncertainty can be worrying. Some people may find their condition has worsened and they still qualify under the stricter rules, but others will lose their eligibility to PIP.”

The Benefits and Work website has a calculator that lets you see how you might be affected by the PIP changes.