Your questions on disability welfare reform answered

13 mins read

Thursday 20 March 2025

Lots of parents have been in touch with us concerned about the government’s plans for reform of disability benefits. You can read more about the proposals in our new story from Tuesday.

However, we wanted to try to answer some of the most pressing questions parents have. Full details of the government’s plans are not yet available, so our answers are based on the information currently available.

In this article

Do these reforms apply UK-wide?

All of the proposed changes apply to families in England and Wales.

Changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will not affect families in Scotland. Scotland has its own Adult Disability Payment instead. Changes to Universal Credit, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and the work capability assessment will apply to families in Scotland.

Northern Ireland has its own social security system. Although this tends to broadly mirror the rules in England and Wales, there are some differences. So as yet it is not clear whether we will see similar changes in Northern Ireland.

Changes to PIP rules

The government intends to change the PIP rules to make it harder for some groups of disabled people to qualify for the daily living component. This component is based on your child’s ability to carry out key activities necessary to participate in daily life.

As well as scoring the necessary number of points to qualify (8 points for the standard rate; 12 for the enhanced rate), there will be an extra test. You will need to score at least four points in any one PIP daily living activity.

Example: Someone who scores two points in five different PIP activities has a total of 10 points. Currently, they will qualify for the standard rate of the daily living component. Under the new rules, they will not qualify for the component. This is because they have not scored at least four points in a single activity.

Someone who scores four points in two separate PIP daily living activities and has a total of eight points would still qualify for the daily living component of PIP.

Your questions

When is this change to PIP rules expected to come in?

The government is proposing changing the PIP daily living component rules from April 2026.

The government is not consulting on this change. Instead is will be bringing forward legislation for parliament to debate.

My child is already on PIP and gets the standard rate for daily living. Are they at risk of losing their PIP daily living award?

The Green Paper says that the change in PIP rules will not only apply to new claimants. It will also apply to existing claimants when their award comes to be reassessed.

This means that some existing claimants will lose their entitlement to PIP daily living component if they fail to score at least four points in at least one daily living activity when they come to be re-assessed. This could affect both people on the standard rate or enhanced rate who do not score at least four points in any one activity.

Will this affect my other benefits?

Losing entitlement to PIP daily living component will also have an impact on other benefits. For example, a carer may stop being eligible for Carer’s Allowance or the carer element of Universal Credit. They may start to become treated as a job-seeker rather than a carer under Universal credit rules.

Changes to the limited capability for work and work-related activity element of Universal Credit

When a disabled adult is claiming Universal Credit, they can qualify for an extra Universal Credit payment. This is the limited capability for work and work-related activity element (LCWRA). It is for people who, because of health problems, are not only unfit to work but also unfit to undertake any work-related activity.

The LCWRA element is currently an extra £95.78 per week (£416.19 per month).

The government is proposing a number of changes to this extra Universal Credit payment. It wants to:

  • Freeze the LCWRA element rate for existing claimants for three years – between 2026 and 2029/30. This means the payment will not increase with inflation during that period. All Universal Claimants getting a LCWRA element will be worse off in real terms, taking into account inflation.
  • Cut the LCWRA rate from £97 to £50 per week for people who qualify for the element after April 2026. (Update: The Chancellor announced in her Spring Statement on 26 March 2025 that this rate will be frozen until 2029-30).
  • Introduce a new disability payment in Universal Credit to compensate those who qualify for the new lower rate of LCWRA. This will only apply if they have “the most severe, life-long health problems who have no prospect of improvement and will never be able to work”.
  • Scrapping the work capability assessment. Entitlement to the LCWRA element (re-branded the health element) will be solely based on whether that disabled person qualifies for PIP. See more below.

The government is not consulting on these changes, but parliament may need to agree on them.

Your questions

My disabled daughter already gets Universal Credit. This includes an extra amount because she has a LCWRA. Will her payments be reduced?

No, the amount of Universal Credit she receives will not go down. This is because she has established an entitlement to the LCWRA element before April 2026.

However, the amount of the LCWRA element she gets will be frozen between April 2026 and 2029/30. This is effectively a cut in real terms, taking into account inflation. Normally the amount would increase each year, but that will not be happening between 2026-29.

My son gets Universal Credit that includes a LCWRA element. What happens if they put him back through another reassessment after April 2026? Will his payment be cut under the new rules?

No, he won’t go onto the lower rate of £50. This will be the case so long as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) continue to accept he still has a LCWRA under any new reassessments.

I’ve heard that disabled people who first qualify for an LCWRA element after April 2026 will get less money. Is that correct?

Yes. Where someone first establishes an entitlement to LCWRA element after April 2026, the extra amount they get will only be £50 per week (£216 per month), rather than £97 per week (£416 per month).

The government argues that this is part of “rebalancing payments” within Universal Credit. It’s true that the standard allowance for all Universal Credit claimants will increase by £7 per week. But that is dwarfed by the huge cut in the LCWRA element for new claimants.

I thought there was going to be protection for severely-disabled people?

The Green Paper does say that some severely disabled adults affected by this cut will be able to get a new disability element of Universal Credit to help protect them from this loss.

However, this extra payment will only apply if your child is considered to have “the most severe, life-long health conditions, who has no prospect of improvement and will never be able to work”. The Green Paper does not provide any information about who is likely to fall into this group. Nor does it say how much this new extra disability payment will be.

The situation is more complicated for young disabled people under 22 years of age. See below.

Preventing payment of the limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) element to young people aged under 21.

The government will consult on a proposal to delay access to the LCWRA element until someone is 22.

Under the current rules, it’s possible for a young disabled adult to claim Universal Credit with a LCWRA element from age 16. This is so long as they are not “receiving education“. Where a young person on Universal Credit qualifies for LCWRA, their award includes a LCWRA element regardless of their age.

However, the proposal is that from 2027/28 onwards, disabled young people who qualify for Universal Credit will only receive the standard allowance. They will not get the LCWRA/health element until they reach the age of 22. This would mean payments of only £311.68 per month until they reached the age of 22, rather than the £727.87 per month currently payable.

Your questions

Will this change apply to 16-21 year olds who are already on Universal Credit with a LCWRA element?

If the government pushes ahead, they do not expect this proposal to come into force until earliest April 2027.

At the moment, it’s unclear whether it will only apply to new claims made after that date. Or whether the restriction will apply to 16-21 year olds already on Universal Credit before that date.

I’ve heard that the government expects most young people aged under 22 to be in education, work or training. Does this include disabled young people?

The government has set out a Youth Guarantee in their Get Britain Working White Paper. This expects virtually all young people aged under 22 “to be engaging with work or training-related activity.”

This would include those getting an additional Universal Credit payment due to their health problems, where continued learning or other forms of meaningful activity would improve their longer-term employment prospects.”

Won’t there be any special rules for disabled 16-21 years so disabled they cannot realistically take part in work or training?

Paragraph 259 of the Green Paper says as part of their consultation, the government will “consider what special provisions need to be put in place for those young people where engagement with the guarantee is not a realistic prospect.”.

So it looks like there may be some protection. However, there is no information about how any protection would work or what the qualifying conditions would be.

Other questions

Is it true that my child will be able to keep claiming DLA until they are 18?

The government will consult on whether to raise the age young people can claim PIP from 16 to 18. This would mean that young people can keep their claim for DLA for longer.

This change is already in place in Scotland. There, young people can choose when to start their claim for Adult Disability Payment from the age of 16 up to age 18.

This change would mean less pressure on young people to make benefit claims as an adult. It is a change that Contact has campaigned for and would support. If the government agree to make this change, we do not yet know when it would happen.

The government says that it will be scrapping the work capability assessment. If that medical assessment disappears, how will they decide which disabled people are eligible for higher payments?

The government will scrap the work capability assessment from 2028/29. It is not consulting on this change.

Instead, whether someone qualifies for any extra financial support in Universal Credit due to health conditions will be solely based on whether or not they get PIP. If they get PIP, they will automatically qualify for an extra health element as part of their Universal Credit. This will be renamed the health element, rather than the limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) element. If a disabled person does not qualify for PIP, they will not be eligible for the extra health payment.

This may be good news for disabled people on PIP. They who will no longer have to go through two different assessments. Instead, their PIP assessment will determine whether they get extra Universal Credit payments due to health reasons alongside their PIP.

However, some disabled people not getting PIP are currently accepted as having a LCWRA. This group will lose out under these plans. People who lose their PIP because of planned changes in the PIP daily living criteria are also likely to lose their Universal Credit health payments too.

My disabled child is 18 and in education. He has made a ‘credits only’ claim for new-style ESA to help him get Universal Credit as a student in the future. Will there be changes in the Universal Credit rules for students?

Once the work capability assessment is scrapped, the rules governing which students are able to get Universal Credit will have to change too. However, at this point of time, no information is available on what these new rules would be.

Any changes to the rules are unlikely to happen until 2028. In the meantime, we expect the current Universal Credit rules for young people receiving education to continue.

Doesn’t the DWP use the work capability assessment to decide whether someone on Universal Credit should have to look for work or take part in training? How will the DWP decide what conditions to apply to disabled people on Universal Credit if it scraps the work capability assessment?

This is correct. The DWP uses the work capability assessment to determine how much money a disabled person gets under Universal Credit. But it also has a second function. The DWP use it to decide whether someone should be exempt from having to job-seek or take part in other work-related activities as a condition of getting Universal Credit.

By scrapping the assessment, there will need to be other means to decide whether someone is exempt from job-seeking or other work-related activities. As part of the Green Paper, the government will consult on which groups of disabled people should be exempt. This means that more disabled people will be expected to engage with DWP staff in “support conversations”. These are about agreeing a pathway towards moving towards work and other work-related activities.

Does this mean that in the future some disabled people who have a LCWRA will be at risk of sanctions if they don’t or can’t do what Universal Credit ask them to?

Potentially yes, but it is too early to tell how likely that is. The green paper states at point 247:

“There will be the ultimate backstop of sanctions to underpin the expectations of engagement, but this should be used only as a last resort. Our priority will always be to reengage people with appropriate support and work together to overcome any barriers or issues that individuals will face in meeting requirements, and we will build in safeguards to ensure vulnerable people are properly protected.”

I’ve heard that the government is scrapping contributory Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). How will this impact on my disabled 20 year old?

It is very unusual for a disabled young person to be getting contributory ESA. So the chances are this won’t affect your child. This is because most disabled young people won’t have worked and paid the national insurance contributions necessary to qualify.

However, there will be disabled parents who may be getting contributory ESA for themselves. The proposals will affect them. The government is consulting on a plan to replace contributory ESA with a new Unemployment Insurance benefit. However, unlike contributory ESA, which can be paid indefinitely for people who have a LCWRA, this new benefit will be time-limited.

Low-income parents who lose contributory ESA may be able to get Universal Credit instead. But some disabled parents with other income or capital will lose out.