Why We're Researching Barriers to Claiming PIP

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is meant to help with the extra costs of living with a long-term health condition or disability. Yet a significant number of people who could be eligible never apply at all. We wanted to understand why, in people's own words, rather than guess — so we've launched a short, voluntary research survey open to adults in selected areas of the UK who are not currently receiving PIP.

This is research, not a claim form

To be clear about what this is and isn't: our PIP survey is a market-research exercise into attitudes and barriers, not an application for PIP and not a lead form dressed up as one. It doesn't ask for health details, National Insurance numbers, or anything you'd need to actually apply. It asks broad questions about your circumstances and experience — whether you've considered applying before, what's put you off if anything, and how confident you'd feel completing the process yourself. At the end, entirely separately, we ask whether you'd like to hear from us if we launch professional application support in the future. That's optional, and answering the research questions doesn't require you to say yes.

Why we think this gap matters

PIP has a reputation — fairly or not — for being a difficult benefit to apply for. The form is long, the assessment process can feel intrusive, and previous rejections put people off trying again even when their circumstances would justify a different outcome. Anecdotally, we hear the same handful of reasons again and again: people don't think their condition is "serious enough" to qualify, they don't know where to start, they've been rejected before and don't want to go through it again, or they simply can't face the paperwork alongside everything else they're managing. We wanted to check whether that's actually representative, or whether we're just hearing from the loudest voices.

• Whether people have ever considered applying for PIP, or started and stopped.
• What — if anything — has put them off applying so far.
• How confident they'd feel completing an application on their own.
• Whether free guidance or paid professional support would change that.
• What a fair way to pay for support might look like, without asking anyone to commit to anything.

What we're not doing

We are not the Department for Work and Pensions, we're not affiliated with them, and this survey has nothing to do with any government review or announcement about PIP — we deliberately kept the questions broad and evergreen rather than tied to any particular news story. We're also not collecting health information at this stage, and we're not quietly funnelling every respondent into a sales conversation. If you complete the survey and say no to being contacted, your answers stay as anonymised research data and nothing more happens.

What happens to the data

We record broad geography at postcode-district level only (e.g. "SW1A", never a full postcode) purely so we can understand whether barriers differ by area — it's not used to identify you individually. Full details of what we collect and why are in our privacy notice. If enough people take part, we intend to publish the aggregate findings — what proportion of people considered applying, what actually stopped them, and whether paid support is something people would realistically consider — because we think that's useful information for anyone working in this space, not just for us.

If you'd like to take part, the survey takes a few minutes and none of your answers commit you to anything.