Combined pip/esa/uc assessment postcodes

[StarBright]

This has come from the benefits & work email:

The DWP has resumed trials of an integrated assessment for PIP/ESA/UC.

The idea is not a single test for both benefits, but a single assessment at which the evidence needed both for PIP and a WCA will be collected.

The initial trial site is Tresco House, Marylebone, London.

Tresco House will only deal with claimants living in E5, N2, N3, N4, N6 London post codes who are claiming Universal Credit (UC) or Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and/or Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

Neither Capita, nor Atos nor Maximus will be involved in the assessments, which is likely to mean they are being carried out by in-house DWP assessors.

[nukecad]

The idea is not a single test for both benefits, but a single assessment at which the evidence needed both for PIP and a WCA will be collected.

That was always a worry, in effect they will be doing two assessments for different benefits with (mostly) different questions for the different descriptors.
Unless they do some jiggery pokery with the descriptors and/or with the questions they ask then that's going to make them much longer than they need to be if you only qualify for the one benefit.

(If you're suspicious you may wonder if it's the the first step of rolling PIP into a UC disability element - because "why not, it's the same assessment for both").

[StarBright]

Having had both ESA & PIP home assessments I can't see how it's possible without extending the F2F to two hours! They both took an hour each.

Also as much as I moan about having gone through one reassessment & next year times up for the other one at least if I fail one I still stand a chance at the other one. One bad assessment messes up two benefits in stead of one that's the most worrying bit for me anyway.

I "kind of" as much as you can like anything about a benefit assessment like getting rid of the private company's & doing the assessments them self's

[nukecad]

Presumably it will be much the same as when they tried using PIP paperwork to try and assess ESA and Vice-versa a few years ago - that failed miserably.

Of course MP's and Ministers change and forget, or don't know, that it's been tried before and failed.

It's one of those seductive ideas that seems to make sense, but only to those (like MP's) who don't know what the different assessments actually involve.
I suspect that many of them don't even know that they are assessing totally different abilities and not simply 'disability'.

(How many times have you heard them refered to by MP's as 'Disability assessments' or even 'Medical assessments' when really they are nothing of the kind)

Getting rid of the assessment companies is just common sense to most, lets face it they are really only there to take the heat for the DWPs poor decisions.
I suspect though that someone has worked out that it will be cheaper to do them in-house than pay an outside company.
No doubt it will still be the same people doing them and there will still be errors made, but the blame for those errors will be squarely where it belongs at the DWP.