By Sammy Jones-
Disabled people and people living with long-term health conditions are being invited to help shape the future of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), as the government-backed Timms Review enters a crucial stage ahead of its final report later this year. The review has opened registration for a series of 15 workshops that will give people with lived experience of disability and the PIP system an opportunity to examine, challenge and refine emerging recommendations before they are submitted to government. The workshops, which will take place across the UK during September and October, are intended to ensure that the final recommendations are grounded not only in evidence and expert opinion but also in the everyday experiences of the people who rely on the benefit.
The move comes after the review’s interim report, published in July, concluded that PIP is no longer fit for purpose. Evidence gathered during the review highlighted widespread concerns about the way the benefit is assessed and administered, with many respondents describing assessment and decision-making processes as “stressful” and “dehumanising”. At the same time, PIP was widely recognised as an important source of financial support, but respondents also reported that the system itself could create additional barriers to participation and independence.
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The latest stage of the review is therefore designed to move beyond simply identifying the problems within the existing system. Participants will be asked to consider the emerging recommendations being developed by the review’s steering group and assess whether they would work effectively in real life. The aim is to establish whether proposed changes would make PIP fairer, clearer and more responsive to the varied circumstances of disabled people and those with long-term health conditions.
Dr Clenton Farquharson CBE, co-chair of the review and a member of the working group overseeing the workshops, said people with direct experience of PIP were uniquely placed to explain what works, what does not and what needs to change. He urged anyone with experience of applying for or receiving PIP to register their interest, stressing that the workshops were intended not simply as an opportunity to collect personal experiences but to test the review’s emerging recommendations against those experiences. He also pledged that participants would be shown how their contributions influence the recommendations ultimately put forward.
That commitment to lived experience is significant given the scale of the evidence already gathered by the review. More than 38,000 responses were submitted to its Call for Evidence, alongside workshops and engagement with disabled people, representative organisations and experts. The latest workshops are intended to build on that extensive evidence base before the steering group finalises its recommendations for the government.
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The workshops will be held in a mixture of online and in-person formats, with nine taking place in person and six online. They are scheduled to cover different regions and nations of the UK, including London, the North East, the South, the Midlands, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber. Each session will be a full-day event, running from 10am to 4pm with regular breaks, and will have a maximum of 20 participants.
The regional approach is intended to ensure that people from different parts of the country can contribute rather than concentrating participation in London or other major centres. The review has also recognised the different arrangements for disability benefits across the UK. PIP remains the responsibility of the Department for Work and Pensions in England and Wales, while responsibility is transferred to the Northern Ireland Executive in Northern Ireland. In Scotland, PIP has been replaced by Adult Disability Payment, although the review says the experiences of disabled people who previously interacted with PIP remain important to understanding how reserved and devolved social security systems interact.
Participation is primarily aimed at disabled people and people with long-term health conditions, ideally those who have interacted with the PIP process. However, the government has also said that carers, family members of disabled people and support workers can register their interest. Crucially, applicants do not need any previous experience of taking part in a government review. The emphasis is on personal experience rather than specialist knowledge of social security policy.
The selection process is designed to create a broad and balanced group. Applications will initially be selected randomly, but the steering group will monitor the characteristics of those chosen to ensure that the workshops represent a range of backgrounds, locations, health conditions and experiences. If particular groups are under-represented, applicants with those characteristics will be identified from the wider pool and selected at random to address the imbalance. The review has warned that demand is likely to exceed the number of available places, meaning that registering an interest will not guarantee an invitation.
Accessibility is also a central part of the process. Applicants can request reasonable adjustments, with the review offering support such as accessible workshop materials, large-print and Easy Read formats, personal assistants or carers attending alongside participants, British Sign Language interpreters, palantypists and arrangements for support animals at in-person events. The application process itself can also be adapted where necessary so that disabled people are not disadvantaged by the way they are asked to register.
Those selected to attend a workshop will receive a one-off payment in recognition of their participation, while reasonable travel and other necessary expenses can also be reimbursed, including costs associated with a personal assistant. The government has cautioned, however, that the payment will be treated as earnings and could affect entitlement to some benefits depending on individual circumstances. Participants receiving means-tested benefits are advised to speak to their work coach or the office administering their benefit before taking part.
The workshops form part of a wider effort by the Timms Review to ensure that its recommendations are developed through co-production. The review is co-chaired by Sir Stephen Timms, Sharon Brennan and Dr Clenton Farquharson CBE, working with a 12-member steering group that brings together lived experience, expertise and a range of characteristics. Alongside the public workshops, the review will engage Disabled People’s Organisations, charities, MPs and other stakeholders to test and refine its proposals.
Importantly, the review has said that workshop discussions will focus on the emerging recommendations rather than simply reopening the process of identifying problems with the current PIP system. Contributions will be summarised and presented to the steering group, where they will be considered alongside the wider evidence. Not every suggestion will necessarily be adopted, but the review has committed to explaining to participants what was taken forward and what was not, and why.
For many disabled people, that distinction could prove important. The future of PIP is not simply a question of government policy or administrative reform; it directly affects people’s ability to manage the additional costs associated with disability and long-term health conditions and to participate in everyday life. The review’s own evidence has already pointed to concerns that the existing assessment framework does not always reflect the realities of fluctuating, complex or less visible conditions, adding to pressure on a system that many people nevertheless regard as essential.
Registration for the shaping recommendations workshops opened at 10am on Wednesday 12 August and will close at 5pm on Friday 21 August 2026. Those selected are expected to be informed by 4 September, ahead of the workshops beginning in September. The review’s final report is expected in autumn 2026, meaning the forthcoming discussions represent one of the last major opportunities for people with direct experience of PIP to influence the recommendations before they are submitted to government.
For a review that has already received tens of thousands of responses, the challenge now is turning evidence into recommendations that can withstand scrutiny from the people most affected by them. The September and October workshops are intended to provide that test. Whether the process ultimately produces a PIP system that disabled people regard as fairer and more humane will depend on what the review recommends and, ultimately, what government chooses to implement. But by inviting people with lived experience to examine the proposals before the final report is completed, the Timms Review is giving those directly affected an opportunity to influence what comes next.
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