Disability Rights UK has raised major concerns over the Timms Review’s draft recommendations for PIP eligibility changes

Some disabled people could be treated less favourably under proposed changes to Personal Independence Payment, campaigners have warned.

Disability Rights UK raised concerns about plans for a revamped PIP system after the Timms Review published its draft recommendations. The organisation said there were some positives in the proposals, including a commitment that PIP will remain a non-means-tested benefit. But it warned there were ‘major concerns’ about plans which could see the benefit move away from being entirely cash-based. The review states that ‘cash will remain the foundation of the award’, but adds that ‘some awards will also include services and other non-cash support’.

This could mean some people being offered services or other forms of support rather than receiving the full value of their award in cash. The proposals include dividing support into ‘cost categories’, with examples including ‘equipment and aids; mobility and transport; clothing and bedding’.

Disability Rights UK said the language used in the draft recommendations was ‘vague and ambiguous’ and left ‘much room for speculation and interpretation’ over whether some disabled people would be treated less favourably than others.

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It is particularly concerned about people with conditions which may be less visible or harder to assess. The organisation pointed to the forthcoming Fonagy report on ADHD, mental health and invisible impairments.

It also highlighted the Government’s recent £3million plan for community mental health support, saying this raised questions over whether groups who already struggle to qualify for PIP could be negatively affected by the proposed reforms.

The campaigners said: “The problem of vague language and proposals runs throughout the draft recommendations.”

They also highlighted what they described as ‘almost complete silence’ on a proposed new eligibility framework for a replacement for PIP. There is also no indication, they said, of whether a new benefit would apply to existing claimants as well as new applicants.

One proposal is for a ‘light touch’ initial assessment, which Disability Rights UK fears could become a ‘tick-box exercise’ that divides impairment groups and sends people down different application pathways. The review does contain a series of proposals designed to improve the experience of applying for and receiving PIP.

These include better guidance, more respectful language, improved reasonable adjustments and an advocacy service for people who need help navigating the system. There are also plans to reform assessments and decision-making, including a new PIP assessment framework to govern how decisions are made and appealed.

The review recommends greater transparency around decisions and a review of how supporting evidence is used. Disability Rights UK said the proposed move towards improving support for people with fluctuating impairments would be welcomed by many.

It said the current points-based system ‘doesn’t capture the needs of people with fluctuating conditions’. The warning comes amid evidence that the public may not support cutting disability benefits.

The latest NatCen Social Attitudes Survey, published on September 8, found that 49% of the public believe there should be more spending on disability benefits, even if this led to higher taxes. Only 7% backed reducing disability benefit spending.

The report said the findings suggested that proposals to reduce disability benefit spending ‘could carry political risks’.

Disability Rights UK said this should be a ‘wake-up call for Government and the media to stop the continued and unfounded attacks on Disabled people and the welfare bill’.

It called instead for a social security system that is ‘fair and truly meets our needs’. The organisation also highlighted research involving 2,000 PIP recipients. Only 16% said PIP covered all of their additional costs.

Separate research into the so-called Activity Trap found that 80% of disabled people were worried about being physically active because they feared losing their benefits. Campaigners say this fear can discourage disabled people from taking part in activities because they worry that doing so could be interpreted as evidence that they no longer need support.

Disability Rights UK and the Activity Trap study back the Commission on Social Security’s proposed Additional Costs Disability Payment as an alternative to PIP. They say it should retain a payment, regardless of employment status, which helps cover the additional costs disabled people face because of ‘living in an inaccessible society’.

They also want ‘adversarial, tick-box assessments’ replaced with personalised support and independent advocacy. And they argue that ‘proper financial support – paid in cash’ should be linked to a wider vision of dignity, independent living and full participation in society.

Sophia Kleanthous, Campaigns and Policy Officer at Disability Rights UK, said: “The Government has consistently failed to properly include Disabled People’s Organisation’s in decisions and processes that affect us.”

She also criticised the lack of notice given over ‘significant updates and decisions during the Timms Review process’. She said the Government had failed to ‘co-produce any part of the Review with DPOs despite promises to do so’.

The next stage will see the draft recommendations considered by disabled people, disabled people’s organisations and charities through a series of round-table discussions.

Residents claim it is now ‘the best road in Britain’ after work to fix it

Potholes in a Cambridgeshire town had become so bad passing vehicles would set off car alarms, residents have claimed. Residents in March have praised the work that’s been done to repair roads after major concerns.

The county council is undertaking an “innovation trial” to find a long-term solution to repairing peat-affected roads and have allocated sections of roads to try new treatments. The first of these is a section of Upwell Road in March, from where it meets Sixteen Foot Bank up to Trinity Farm.

Deep soil mixing, chemical stabilisation and the use of alternative lightweight materials are being used to strengthen the road’s foundations. Alongside this, a section of Upwell Road from the roundabout with Cavalry Drive to Binimoor Road has also been resurfaced, and residents said it is now “the best road in Britain”.

Martyn Cross said: “It’s excellent, really, that’s all I can say – it was getting terrible with potholes but they’ve done a great job. That’s probably the best road in Britain now.”

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The 66-year-old said parts of the country roads are in a “terrible state” where there is an especially high amount of peat. Peat soil lies underneath 40 per cent of Cambridgeshire, but in Fenland this is 97 per cent, with nearly all roads affected, according to the council. They said that repairing roads built on peat can cost four or five times as much as repairs to conventional roads.

Alastair Morton said the resurfacing of Upwell Road is “fabulous” and everyone is pleased with the end result. The 60-year-old said: “It was horrendous out there, there was so much rattling when trailers went past that my car alarm went off twice.”

George Saule, 69, said: “It’s made a lot of difference – all they need to do now is stop those great big lorries going through.” Malcolm Gray said the roads were “never designed” for the weight of the vehicles that drive on it today.

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The 76-year-old said: “If you walk or drive around here, you will see that the telegraph poles all lean away from the roads.” He said a long-term solution to address the foundations of the roads would save the council money rather than doing patchwork repairs.

He said: “It would cost money, but in the long-run it would pay for itself and potentially save lives because driving down here is dangerous. If you aren’t aware of the situation you could easily end up in a dyke.”

Cllr Alex Beckett, chair of the county council’s highways and transport committee, said peat-affected roads are one of their “biggest challenges”. The Lib Dem councillor said the trial will test three different techniques on the same road to figure out what works best on cost and longevity.

At the start of construction in August he said: “We’ll be learning from this and taking that evidence directly to government to make the case for a fairer funding settlement that reflects the unique challenges we face. It’s all part of our drive to get Cambridgeshire’s roads back on track.”

The road improvement project is being funded through a £1.5m grant from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. Mayor Paul Bristow said he was “pleased” to see the trial get underway and that it’s “essential” to find effective solutions to the challenges of peat-affected roads.

He said: “Getting Cambridgeshire and Peterborough moving means investing in infrastructure that is resilient and fit for the future. By finding better solutions for roads affected by peat soils, we can reduce disruption, improve reliability and make the most of available funding by investing in approaches that deliver long-term results.”

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the lumpy stormtroopers deployed on our streets (including the street outside our offices) last week by the new national figure ‘Tommo’. It would also be hard not to cackle at Kent Police’s description of their carefully-planned appearance on Dover streets last weekend as ‘spontaneous’.

Tommo is a retired kidnapper, who failed at that ancient trade, and also (so we are told) a born-again Christian. I am tickled by the idea of ‘Tommo’, real name Daniel Thomas, trilling ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’ in whatever Church, chapel or tent he worships at. I await the moving publicity video with sanctified soundtrack.

Did you notice his black-clad followers wear shorts rather than grown-up trousers? This is very odd. Having had a private education, can Mr Thomas be unaware of a previous (but fictional) organisation called the Black Shorts, a fascistic 1930s militia headed by the ludicrous Roderick Spode.

This was the invention of the comic genius PG Wodehouse, also known for creating Jeeves and Wooster. Wodehouse wrote of Spode that he looked ‘as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla and had changed its mind at the last moment’, but Spode’s ferocious, glowering image was undermined by his secret life as a purveyor of frilly ladies’ underwear.

Should we also not laugh at people who no doubt growl that we should ‘ban the burqa’ – while themselves wearing a garment which is rather like a burqa, the balaclava helmet?

But dare we laugh? The accelerating collapse of the conventional parties, especially over immigration, makes it almost certain that people of this sort will grow closer to actual power in the years to come. In France, the dubious National Rally edges towards office. In Germany the AfD, which has some creepy connections, does the same. In the USA, the increasingly erratic Mr Trump continues to stomp wildly across the country and the planet like a giant with a sore head. The problem is that, just like the conventional parties, these movements will fail. Mass immigration has already happened. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who posed as the scourge of migrants and so won office, has almost entirely failed to do anything to solve the problem.

These movements are like miracle cures which we buy in the hope they will work, then discard and replace with new, allegedly more powerful remedies.

Until eventually we realise there is no cure, or that the cure will be much worse than the disease.

Meanwhile our political system rots and loses confidence. Poverty, disorder and a strong intolerant state grow daily more likely. The governments of the last 30 years have much to answer for.

BBC can’t face the truth about grammar schools

Isn’t it inspiring that Diane Reay, the rather Left-wing Emeritus Professor of Education at Cambridge University, began life as a coalminer’s daughter on a Leicestershire council estate?

I think so. It rejoices my heart that her talents were discovered and nurtured, instead of being ignored and wasted in some disorderly, bog-standard comp.

What is not so wonderful is that it can never happen again. The girls’ state grammar school where Professor Reay studied in the 1960s, and from which by dedicated hard work she won a place at university, was abolished in 1972. How odd then that Professor Reay’s moving achievement wasn’t even mentioned in a recent BBC Radio 4 documentary on the comprehensive school revolution, even though she appeared in it.

Don’t tell me, by the way, that this was especially rare in those days. In 1954 the Gurney-Dixon report noted that almost 65 per cent of grammar school pupils came from working class homes.

The BBC programme was very odd. I tried to get an advance recording but could not do so.

It mistakenly suggested that the Left’s war of destruction on grammar schools dates from 1976, when it really got under way in 1965.

It interviewed plenty of supporters of comps, not least my former colleague Fiona Millar (another grammar school product), who is the mother of Alastair Campbell’s children.

But it did not interview a single supporter of selection by ability at 11.

Note to the BBC, I am such a supporter, I’ve written a book about it and am easily contacted. I have made several rather good documentaries on TV and radio.

If you want to have another go at this very important subject, I am your man.

But you’ll be comforted to know that, despite my unpopular Right-wing opinions, I do still get some offers of broadcast appearances. Last week I was invited to take part in a Channel 4 Unreality Show called ‘Handcuffed’, in which (if I were fool enough to accept) I would be chained for the day to some other minor celebrity (chosen to be as different from me as possible). 

If this were not bad enough, it would involve being superintended by the ghastly Jonathan Ross, embodiment of all that is wrong with today’s culture. Just so you know people do turn these things down, I can reveal here that I said ‘no thanks’. 

The new restaurant is the city’s fourth branch

A fourth Burger King restaurant has officially opened in Peterborough. Burger King has opened its fourth branch in the Cambridgeshire city today (Friday, September 11). The new restaurant has created 25 new jobs.

On the opening day, the chain offered 1,000 Whopper or Chicken Royale burgers to those who visited.

Olivia, Restaurant Manager at Burger King® UK, Peterborough location, said: “My team and I are looking forward to meeting all our new customers in Peterborough! We can’t think of a better way to celebrate than by giving away 1,000 of our iconic Whopper® or Chicken Royale burgers so get down nice and early to claim yours!”

The fourth restaurant has opened in Boongate in the premises of the former Frankie and Benny’s. This Frankie and Benny’s branch closed its doors in 2023 as a part of nationwide cuts.

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