Pip esa assessment together

deeds1970

Hi all,with the news that both benefits in future face to face being combined.how does this work if you have a pip award for 5 years and esa review due within 18months, does it meam the pip award looked at again.im little confused by how it will work to tie in together if esa is done every 1,2 or 3 years..
Thanks

calcotti

It's a government proposal to consider combining the assessments so nobody knows how it will work as no details have been been issued yet.

mikehughescq

The proposal has long since been “paused” i.e. kicked into the long grass.

calcotti

mikehughescq said:

The proposal has long since been “paused” i.e. kicked into the long grass.

There was a statement in February that they are looking at it again starting in London from this month. Whether or not that is actually happening I don't know.
See https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2021-02-19/155229

calcotti

What is bizarre about the parliamentary answer i referenced above is that primarily refers to IT systems rather than to fundamental issues that might need to be addressed when considering one assessment process for PIP and WCA. (Who comes up with names such as 'Departmental Transformation Area'?)

Of course it would no doubt be easier if the assessment services were actually run by DWP instead of being outsourced.

mikehughescq

It’s not so bizarre. The first attempt foundered instantly on the fact the IT was nowhere near up to snuff. This they abandoned the specific idea of joining the two processes and have decided to explore whether they could make the IT work regardless. Nothing learnt from 30 years of IT failures. 

calcotti

mikehughescq said:

It’s not so bizarre. The first attempt foundered instantly on the fact the IT was nowhere near up to snuff. This they abandoned the specific idea of joining the two processes and have decided to explore whether they could make the IT work regardless. Nothing learnt from 30 years of IT failures. 

Point taken, I do so see that making sure existing systems are compatible etc is essential. However, but in my opinion, one of the reasons for many IT failures is because the people designing them aren't properly briefed about what the IT might need to do. The IT says no because nobody thought about that problem. UC might have got off to  abetter start if someone had just thought about the fact that people live 'messy' lives and the IT needs to be able to deal with it. Therefore a bit more thought/discussion about what an integrated assessment is intended to achieve wouldn't go amiss.

mikehughescq

The UC one is interesting. I’ve an inside line on that for a couple of reasons and essentially there was no doubt on the brief at all. Build a system that works even if it doesn’t do everything at once and needs to be added to later. Build a system that isn’t hamstrung by having to talk to legacy systems. So, it was deliberately premised on it not bothering to acknowledge complexity from the off. 

calcotti

mikehughescq said: 

The UC one is interesting...So, it was deliberately premised on it not bothering to acknowledge complexity from the off. 

That perhaps explains a lot. We could have a long discussion about whether it's right that claimants then end up with difficulties because the IT system can't cope with their circumstances. For a system that was supposed to save money due to automation it seems to requires a lot of manual intervention, sometimes on a monthly basis, (although I acknowledge that we don't deal with the straightforward cases which are working as intended).