PIP claimants are being forced to travel long distances to unfamiliar places in order to have a face-to-face medical assessment, due to a shortage of assessors and assessment centres and a computerised booking system which ignores claimants needs.
We’re asking Benefits and Work readers to help out by telling us about the PIP assessment centre you attended if you have already had a medical. That way new claimants can be better prepared for attending their medical, if they are unable to get it changed to somewhere they know.
The kind of things we need to know about are:
Distance to nearest bus stop or rail station.
Nearest parking, any disabled parking.
Distance to walk if you’re dropped as close to the door as possible.
Wheelchair access.
Toilets, including disabled toilets.
Ground floor or first floor.
Lift available.
At the moment we are only collecting information about Atos centres, because they at least have the courtesy to publish a list of theirs. If we get sufficient response we will extend the information to Capita centres too.
You can find your PIP assessment centre listed by starting from this page.
