What evidence do I need to supply for PIP?

Hi @benlis10 and @Elizabeth1, Welcome to the site. I have found things a lot easier if you have a Consultants or specialists letter to back up your conditions. @Elizabeth1 you are absolutely right that in putting down all of the professionals you see regularly as they will be consulted. I know this as I have been contacted as a professional before and have completed my wife's form on her behalf. So have been 2 sides of the application process. 

@benlis10, I speak from very limited experience but my observations are

1. Your medical professionals are unlikely to be contacted to back up claims you have made.

2. Letters from medical staff are of limited use. Typically they confirm you have had a procedure which is good because it adds veracity to your claim, but what the letter does not do is say how your condition affects day to day living. This is what the assessor wants to know. In my wife’s case, for example, one of her cancer treatments required the severance of a nerve in her neck which severely restricted her arm movement. A consequence of that is that getting dressed has become a struggle. Nowhere in the doctors’ notes will you find this mentioned. Similarly chemotherapy resulted in peripheral neuropathy so she has limited feeling in her fingertips and restricted dexterity. There’s much correspondence to show she had chemotherapy but nothing in writing on the long term effects.

3. Read the explanatory notes very carefully. They are very helpful. For every restriction to your daily life that you mention, give one or two brief and recent examples of the state of affairs e.g. “Yesterday I was in such pain that I had to ask for a chair in the chemists to sit down and they called for a taxi to take me home.”

4. Do you have aids such as walking sticks, grab handles, lifeline monitors etc to help you cope? Mention them all if they’re relevant. When my wife had her face to face assessment, the assessor noticed at once the grab handles and white stick in the porch. On the table waiting for him were the various living aids used to make life more manageable. He said he didn’t need to see them and took our word but the fact that they were there surely did no harm.

5. Be honest. Do not try to claim points under every heading. Assessors are skilled at picking up inconsistencies. 

6. Do you have an articulate friend who could help you complete the form? What might seem obvious to us can come across as mangled and disjointed - see some of the postings on this forum! Try to be as pithy as you can. As you write, all the while ask yourself ‘Why am I telling them this? How does this back up my claim?’

7. Keep a folder of all correspondence. Note the dates when you posted things, the date and times of phone calls to the DWP etc.

Read through postings on this forum and you get some real horror stories. But remember you are only hearing one side of the story and that people often only come to the forum with bad news to report. The view you will form of the assessors from reading so many stories on this site is that they are cold-hearted liars out to cheat you. The claimant says this is so, the assessor says no it isn’t. Well somebody is not telling the whole truth and it is not always the assessors who are the bad guys. 55% of people who claim PIP are successful. When you browse this forum you might think the success rate is 5.5%

Good luck.

One other thing I should have mentioned. I do not know if this was any use to the assessor but merely writing it down proved to be an excellent aide memoir. 

As my wife has had multiple conditions we devised a table containing several columns:
*condition
*date of diagnosis
*hospital/clinic where treated
*name of consultant/medical professional handling the case
*impact of the condition on daily life
*number of the photocopied sheet supporting the claim.

This was a succinct summary and proved to be useful when the assessor was asking questions relating to dates and also outside the PIP journey just in regular medical appointments when they want a potted medical history.

CockneyRebel, that list is so helpful I wish I had known of its existence last Autumn when I was helping my wife make her claim. 

Only in one area does our experience diverge from what you said. We did not ask for an ongoing award - and others should follow your advice and do so  - so we were very pleased that her award is valid until 2027. Perhaps it was obvious that the peripheral neuropathy is now permanent, the severed nerve in the neck will never heal, the optic nerve is permanently damaged, the brain tumour is inoperable etc.