PIP helps with the extra costs of living with a long-term health condition or disability. It looks at how your condition affects daily living and mobility.
Your PIP evidence diary and descriptor checklist
PIP decisions are made on evidence, not on how unwell you are. The assessor scores what you can and cannot do reliably across 12 activities. This diary helps you record the right kind of evidence in the words decision makers actually use. Keep it for 7 days, then keep going if you can. Real dates and specific examples are what tribunals and case managers take seriously.
The four reliability questions
For every activity, the law says you must be able to do it “safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly, and within a reasonable time period” (The Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013).
- Safely means unlikely to cause harm to you or anyone else.
- Repeatedly means as often as the activity is reasonably required.
- A reasonable time period means no more than twice as long as it would take someone without your condition.
- Acceptable standard means done properly, not just attempted.
If the honest answer to any of the four is no, that attempt counts as evidence, write it down.
Functional beats diagnosis. PIP is a functional test. A well-drafted Functional Evidence Statement is worth more than a diagnosis letter that does not say what you cannot do.
What makes evidence strong
- Specific dates beat vague statements, “On 14 May I could not stand long enough to cook, I ate cereal instead” beats “I struggle to cook”.
- Frequency matters, say “4 days out of 7” not “sometimes”.
- Describe your typical day and your worst day, and say which is which.
- Aids count, note every time you use a stool, grab rail, timer, list, or another person’s prompting.
- Aftermath counts, if a shower costs you two hours of recovery, that is evidence about repeatedly.
- Do not minimise, write what actually happens, not what you push through.
