The Pension, Disability and Carers Service (PDCS) has in place a number of procedures to verify and monitor the accuracy of disability living allowance (DLA) award entitlement decisions.
PDCS has a dedicated national checking team that continuously monitors a randomly selected sample of DLA outcome decisions and appeal submissions. In addition to this, DLA Operations have their own Quality Improvement Support Team that performs random checks on a sample of all recent DLA outcome decisions from each operational unit. Local operational managers also have technical checking teams who target areas of known difficulty before decisions are issued.
Each year, PDCS also performs 12,000 random case interventions under the Right Payment Programme, to ensure the accuracy and correctness of the DLA live load.
To encourage consistency of approach and better quality decisions, PDCS has introduced Customer Case Management (CCM), which provides comprehensive medical guidance for decision makers on the effects of disability, and guidance on focused further evidence gathering including more direct contact between decision makers and customers. To complement the existing checking regime, work is underway to introduce post decision checks targeted at those decisions that do not appear to conform to the medical guidance.