The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to restart the process of moving around 150,000 remaining adult Disability Living Allowance (DLA) claimants onto Personal Independence Payment (PIP), according to a report by welfare rights website Rightsnet.
Rightsnet said a DWP stakeholder update confirmed an initial test involving around 3,000 claimants across England and Wales will begin in September before ministers decide whether to resume the wider transfer programme. The DWP paused the final stage of transferring adult DLA claimants to PIP, leaving a remaining group of people who were still due to be reassessed.
Pilot testing and process
The change will not affect people in Scotland, where disability benefits are devolved and adult DLA claimants are being transferred under separate arrangements run by Social Security Scotland.
Under the plans outlined in the stakeholder update, a small-scale pilot will begin in September to test the impact on claimants, DWP operations and benefit spending before any wider rollout.
People selected for the pilot will not be moved automatically to PIP. Instead, they will receive an invitation to make a claim for the benefit and their entitlement will be assessed under the PIP rules.
Their DLA payments should continue while their PIP claim is being considered, provided they make their claim within the required timescales and take part in the assessment process. Adults invited to claim PIP are normally given 28 days to begin their application.
Context and remaining claimants
The DWP has already completed around 1.9 million DLA reassessment claims in England and Wales since PIP was introduced, with the vast majority of eligible claimants having already moved onto the newer benefit.
However, a final group of around 150,000 people remain in scope for reassessment. This includes some people who were below State Pension age when PIP replaced DLA for working-age adults in 2013 but whose cases have yet to be reviewed.
The latest DWP figures suggest around 144,000 people were still receiving adult DLA in England and Wales during 2025/26, broadly in line with the estimate of around 150,000 people expected to be affected by the restart.
No timetable has yet been announced for inviting the remaining claimants beyond the initial test involving around 3,000 cases.
Anyone who receives a letter inviting them to claim PIP should not ignore it, as failing to submit a claim by the deadline could result in their DLA payments ending.
PIP is designed to help with the extra costs of living with a long-term health condition or disability and is awarded based on how a person's condition affects their daily life and mobility, rather than on the condition itself. The benefit is not means-tested, so a person's income or savings do not affect entitlement.
