Five health conditions are likely to hand people on Personal Independence Payment a free £749 in November - from the Department for Work and Pensions.
DWP data shows 3.8 million people now claim Personal Independence Payment (PIP) - an increase of 2 per cent on the number of claimants recorded at the end of April.
37 per cent of the total now get the highest level of payment awards. A successful claim for PIP is worth between £29.20 and £187.45 per week, with payments usually issued every four weeks which amounts to awards of between £116.80 and £749.80.
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The five most commonly recorded disabling conditions for PIP are: p sychiatric disorder (39% of claims), musculoskeletal disease (general) (19% of claims), neurological disease (13% of claims), musculoskeletal disease (regional) (12% of claims) and respiratory disease (4% of claims).
As part of your claim for this benefit, or a review of an existing claim, you may need to have a health assessment.
There are four steps to claiming Personal Independence Payment. Contact the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Centre by phone, by post or by using sign language. If you use sign language, you might be able to use the video relay service to claim PIP.
This information is available in Easy Read format. You can use British Sign Language (BSL) or Irish Sign Language (ISL) to contact the Personal Independence Payment Centre.
If you cannot use a phone or the video relay service or have no one to support you to make your claim by phone, you can make a claim by post instead. This means it takes longer to get a decision. You can write to the PIP Independence Payment (PIP) Centre.
If you have claimed DLA before you can ask that your earlier medical evidence is also made available. Start collecting any other supporting evidence you might want to send.
Someone else can call on your behalf but you'll need to be with them when they call. You'll be sent a 'How your disability affects you' form (also known as PIP2).
It comes with notes to help you fill it in and has useful information on the types of evidence to send to PIP. It also asks you to explain how your condition affects your daily life, both on good and bad days, and over a range of activities.
It is important you fill in this form and return it in the envelope given as soon as possible.