My PIP claim was paid from the wrong date
As I had previously explained, my claim started in an unusual manner - a renewal DLA claim that was rejected and routed to PIP. This scenario will not apply to PIP claims started in the usual way over the phone.
For reasons I didn't understand, PIP was only paid from 17 July 2013. The copy of my PIP file I received following my Subject Access Request confirmed the date of claim is 9 July 2013 and the decision maker decided I was eligible for PIP from 9 July 2013.
I phoned the PIP helpline to question why no PIP was paid for those eight days. The person on the phone was unable to help and reminded me the helpline was little more than a call centre, but decided the best thing to do was send the question to the benefit centre responsible for my claim.
A couple of days later I got a call from the Case Manager responsible for my original decision, thanking my for my query and explaining that it had him and his colleagues scratching their heads as everything they checked showed entitlement starting from 9 July but they could see clearly that payment had only started from 17 July.
Eventually they found the information on an single fairly obscure screen on the computer system that none of them remembered looking at before had not been backdated - if I understood him correctly it was a screen about alternate names. Once that was corrected, the system stated that there had been an underpayment, which they had attempted to send to me. In a formal sense, this was revision of the original decision due to official error.
The Case Manager explained that this situation was being passed to those responsible for the computer system as a possible bug, because it appeared that all the human steps taken to backdate the date of claim were correct but the system had failed to backdate this screen, leading to an underpayment and incorrect start date in the decision letter. He explained it is possible the same glitch has affected other claims that should have been processed using an earlier date of claim than the initial entries on the PIP computer system, though this will never apply to PIP claims started in the normal manner over the telephone.
I said it would be best for the decision letter to be reissued, as the letter I had ran from the wrong date. He agreed that this was the best course of action and that it would be done.
A few days later, I got the corrected decision letter, but the payment still had not arrived. I rang the Case Manager on his direct line to thank him for the corrected letter and query the missing payment. He explained that they had found the only way ahead was to correct the decision to what it should have been, which is why the corrected letter showed that I should have received the extra 8 days of money with my initial payment of arrears. He agreed to investigate further, and the missing £153.60 for 8 days of enhanced rate Daily Living and enhanced rate Mobility has now arrived in my account.