91% of people in Wales receiving standard Personal Independence Payment set to lose their benefit

Robert Lloyd, Citizens Advice Denbighshire

This week, Members of Parliament will vote on a series of measures which will drastically cut the financial support given to disabled people and people with long-term health conditions across Great Britain.

In Wales, with a higher proportion of people receiving support for health conditions than in England, these cuts will be particularly harmful, with 91% of recipients of standard daily living and 16% of enhanced daily living rate recipients set to lose their Personal Independence Payment.

In Denbighshire, home to some of the most deprived wards in Wales, this means almost half the people currently in receipt of Personal Independence Payment will no longer be eligible for daily living support.

What support is already available?

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is a non means-tested health benefit. This means that you’re entitled to financial support because of the way your health affects your daily life and mobility, regardless of your income or savings.

The assessment for the daily living element of PIP asks questions such as “tell us about the difficulties you have with preparing food and how you manage them”.

Research by Scope UK suggests that, on average, disabled households need an extra £1,010 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households.

PIP – a standard daily living payment of £73.90 per week and an enhanced rate of £110.40 per week – is designed to go some way to help meet the cost of disability on day-to-day life.

Universal Credit health top-ups – worth an additional £423.27 each month – are based on your ability to do work-related activity, with a separate and more prescriptive assessment asking questions such as “can you safely get around a place that you have not been to before without help?”.

The reforms considered in the parliamentary vote will tie Universal Credit health top-ups to daily living PIP and change the eligibility criteria for this element of PIP, making it much more difficult to prove eligibility and, therefore, making it much harder to qualify for Universal Credit support.

Somebody entitled to both the highest rate of daily living PIP and the Universal Credit health top-up will be entitled to £1,324.10 per month.

What is changing and who will lose support?

Following an investigation by Citizens Advice Denbighshire, through Freedom of Information requests to the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP), the scale of the changes on which Members of Parliament are voting has been revealed.

16% of people receiving the highest rate of support in Denbighshire (compared to 13% in Great Britain as a whole) will lose their health-related benefits. For those receiving both daily living PIP and Universal Credit health top-ups, this will mean a 68% reduction in their monthly income from £1,324.10 per month to £421.14 per month.

91% of standard daily living claimants in Denbighshire as a whole are set to lose all their health-related benefits (compared to 87% in Great Britain as a whole).

These percentages – 16% for enhanced and 91% for daily living recipients – are the same for Wales as a whole, according to the DWP.

Changes to PIP eligibility

Currently, to qualify for daily living PIP you need to score 8 (standard) or 12 points (enhanced) across 10 daily living activities. Most people we help at Citizens Advice Denbighshire reach these thresholds by scoring 2 or 3 points across all 10 activities.

Requiring an aid or appliance to be able to manage toilet needs, for example, would score 2 points in the managing toilet needs and incontinence activity.

The criteria changes being voted on by MPs this week will require claimants to score at least 4 points in one of these daily living activities. To score 4 points in any activity requires somebody else to help you. In the managing toilet needs or incontinence activity, for example, you would need somebody to assist you to be able to manage your toilet needs.

This suggests that those currently entitled to support have health conditions for which they don’t need somebody else to help, but which have a consistently detrimental effect on their day-to-day life across every aspect.

The reform will essentially remove the benefit from people who don’t need somebody else to assist them with their daily life.

Who is affected?

While the DWP hasn’t released information on a town-by-town basis as to who will be affected, by applying the Denbighshire-wide figure to areas for which there is PIP entitlement data, we can make an indicative estimate as to which communities will be most affected.

(Data on estimates from FOI2025/45891; data on numbers correct as of January 2025, DWP StatXplore).

While these calculations are estimates based on DWP data for Denbighshire as a whole, and may mask nuances in each community and each individual’s case, they are the closest we have to an impact assessment for Denbighshire and are indicative of what’s at stake going into the vote.

Prestatyn and Rhyl to be hardest hit by disability benefit reform

The reforms to PIP daily living eligibility will disproportionately affect the areas in Denbighshire where there are more people in receipt of the standard daily living rate than those in receipt of the enhanced rate.

This means that Prestatyn as a whole, which has a higher proportion of people receiving the standard daily living rate, will be the most widely affected in Denbighshire by these cuts with 51.3% of people losing their entitlement.

Rhyl, which includes the most deprived wards in Wales and has a higher proportion of people receiving the enhanced rate of PIP, will see a lower percentage of people losing their entitlement at 49.5%, but only just.

In raw numbers, however, Rhyl’s deprivation and population size means that more people will be affected there than anywhere else in the county.

Call for Denbighshire MPs to vote against these reforms without consultation

Members of Parliament are expected to vote on these changes without formal consultation with disabled people, people with long-term health conditions, and organisations that represent and support them. These changes are not included in the DWP’s disability benefits reform consultation.

Citizens Advice Denbighshire is asking our Members of Parliament — Becky Gittins MP (Clwyd East), Gill German MP (Clwyd North), Claire Hughes MP (Bangor Aberconwy), and Liz Saville-Roberts MP (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) — to vote against these unilateral reforms, and demand the Department for Work & Pensions engage with and involve the communities affected by these changes before making decisions which will fundamentally affect their lives.

The welfare benefits bill in the UK is a significant proportion of the UK Government’s budget and it may be that we need to have a wider conversation about the type of support that is available for people who are the most in need. But that conversation must, at the very least, be had in earnest.

Our duty as a Denbighshire charity is not only to help people, regardless of their issue or circumstances, but also to identify and address the causes of hardship.

These reforms, without consultation with those affected – the most vulnerable in our communities — will not alleviate poverty and encourage disabled people into work (despite being a non-means tested benefit), but will cause additional hardship and significantly impact people’s financial and emotional wellbeing.

We hope that our representatives will take this appeal into consideration before casting their vote on Wednesday.

Citizens Advice Denbighshire is here to help people in Denbighshire, no matter your issue or circumstances. If you live in Denbighshire and would like free, independent, impartial and confidential advice and support, visit our site. Outside of Denbighshire, search for your local Citizens Advice for help with your issue.