PIP Descriptors & Points System 2026: Full Guide

But there’s far more to this system than point thresholds. How your condition is assessed, how fluctuating symptoms are scored, and what “reliably” doing a task actually means can make the difference between 0 points and an enhanced rate award. This guide breaks down every activity, every descriptor, and every point value — with practical tips on what evidence you’ll need.

What Are the PIP Descriptors? (2026 Update)

PIP doesn’t care about your diagnosis. What matters is how your condition affects what you can actually do, day to day.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) assesses this through 12 everyday activities — things like cooking, washing, getting dressed, and moving around outside. For each activity, there’s a set of “descriptors”: statements describing different levels of difficulty. Each descriptor carries a specific number of points.

Think of it like this. For the activity “preparing food,” one descriptor says you can cook a meal without help (0 points). Another says you need someone to supervise you while cooking (4 points). And another says you can’t prepare or cook food at all (8 points). The assessor picks the one descriptor that best matches your situation on most days.

The 12 activities split into two groups:

Daily living component (10 activities)

1. Preparing food
2. Taking nutrition
3. Managing therapy or monitoring a health condition
4. Washing and bathing
5. Managing toilet needs or incontinence
6. Dressing and undressing
7. Communicating verbally
8. Reading and understanding signs, symbols and words
9. Engaging with other people face to face
10. Making budgeting decisions

Mobility component (2 activities)

11. Planning and following journeys
12. Moving around

These activities and their descriptors are defined in law — specifically, the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013. They haven’t changed since PIP was introduced, though the Timms Review (more on that below) could lead to changes after autumn 2026.

How the PIP Points System Works: 8 vs 12 Points

Here’s how the scoring works — and it trips a lot of people up.

You only score the highest applicable descriptor per activity. If two descriptors apply to you within the same activity, you don’t get points for both. You get whichever scores more. So if “needs prompting to prepare food” (2 points) and “needs supervision to prepare food” (4 points) both apply, you score 4 points for that activity. Not 6.

But you add up points across different activities. Your total for daily living is the sum of your highest descriptor from each of the 10 activities. Your mobility total is the sum from the 2 mobility activities.

Daily living and mobility are scored completely separately. You could get enhanced rate daily living and zero mobility. Or standard mobility and no daily living. The two totals are never combined.

So what are the “8 points for PIP” that people ask about? It’s the minimum threshold. Score 8 points across your daily living activities and you qualify for the standard rate of the daily living component. Score 12 and you get the enhanced rate. Same applies separately for mobility.

You can receive one component, both components, or neither. It depends entirely on your scores.

PIP Payment Rates for 2026/27

From 6 April 2026, PIP rates increase by 3.8% in line with September 2025 CPI inflation. Here’s what each award level pays:

If you qualify for the enhanced rate of both components, you’ll receive £194.60 per week — that’s £778.40 every four weeks, or just over £10,100 a year.

PIP is tax-free. It isn’t affected by your income, savings, or whether you’re working. And it doesn’t count towards the benefit cap.

(Source: DWP Benefit and Pension Rates 2026 to 2027)

All 10 Daily Living Activities & Points

Below is every daily living activity with its full set of descriptors and point values. For each activity, we’ve included a brief explanation of what assessors are looking for and a practical tip about evidence.

In our experience helping hundreds of PIP claimants, the descriptor tables below are the single most important thing to understand before filling in your PIP2 form or attending an assessment. Most people we help score far more points than their initial DWP decision gave them — because they didn’t know these descriptors existed or how to match their difficulties to them.

Both Mobility Activities & Points

The mobility component has just two activities, but they’re worth up to 12 points each — meaning a single activity can take you straight to the enhanced rate.

How Fluctuating Conditions Are Scored: The 50% Rule

Many conditions don’t affect you the same way every day. You might cook safely on Monday but burn yourself on Wednesday. Walk 100 metres on a good day but barely manage 20 on a bad one.

PIP accounts for this through what’s called the “50% rule.”

A descriptor applies if it describes your situation on more than 50% of days over a 12-month period. That 12-month period is made up of the 3 months before your assessment date and 9 months after it (this matches PIP’s qualifying period and prospective test).

Here’s how it works step by step:

1. For each activity, the assessor looks at which descriptor applies to you on most days
2. “Most days” means more than half the days in that 12-month period
3. If one descriptor applies on more than 50% of days, that’s your descriptor
4. If more than one descriptor applies on more than 50% of days, you get the one with the highest points
5. If no single descriptor applies on more than 50% of days, but several together do (for example, descriptor B applies 40% of the time and descriptor C applies 30%), the one that applies most often is selected

This means you shouldn’t describe your best days in your PIP form. You should describe how things are on most days — and explain the range. How bad are your worst days? How often do they happen? What can you manage on an average day versus a good one?

(Source: Citizens Advice — How the DWP makes a decision on PIP claims)

The “Reliability” Test: Safely, Repeatedly & in Reasonable Time

This is possibly the most important — and most misunderstood — part of the whole PIP assessment. In our experience, this is the single biggest reason people are under-scored: they can technically do something, but they can’t do it reliably. If we had a pound for every claimant who said “I told them I could cook” without mentioning it takes 90 minutes and leaves them exhausted for the rest of the day, we’d have closed up shop years ago.

Under Regulation 4(2A) of the PIP Regulations 2013, for a descriptor to apply, you must be able to complete the activity:

1. Safely — in a way that’s unlikely to cause harm to you or anyone else, either during or after the activity. If cooking risks burns because of tremors, that’s not safe. If walking causes falls, that’s not safe.

2. To an acceptable standard — meaning the outcome is reasonable. Cooking a meal that’s inedible because you can’t judge ingredients properly isn’t cooking to an acceptable standard. The Upper Tribunal case KW v SSWP [2024] UKUT 410 confirmed that pain is relevant to whether something is done to an acceptable standard.

3. Repeatedly — as often as is reasonably required during the day. Can you cook one meal, or could you do it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? If cooking one meal exhausts you so much that you can’t prepare anything else that day, you can’t do it repeatedly. The DWP must consider the cumulative effect of activities — if walking to the shop leaves you unable to cook when you get home, that matters.

4. In a reasonable time period — no more than twice as long as someone without your condition. If it takes a non-disabled person 30 minutes to prepare a simple meal, you should be able to do it within an hour. If it takes you longer, the descriptor for doing it unaided may not apply to you.

Here’s a practical example. Sarah has rheumatoid arthritis. She can physically get dressed, but:

• It takes her 45 minutes (twice as long as normal) — fails the “reasonable time” test
• Fastening buttons causes severe pain — fails the “acceptable standard” test
• She can only manage it once; she couldn’t change again for an evening event — fails the “repeatedly” test

Sarah should score points for dressing even though she can technically dress herself.

What’s Changing? PIP Reforms from November 2026

This is probably why you’re here. The government announced significant changes to PIP in the Pathways to Work Green Paper (March 2025), and the situation has shifted several times since.

The 4-Point Single Activity Rule

Currently, you need a total of 8 points across all daily living activities to get the standard rate. It doesn’t matter whether those 8 points come from one activity scoring 8, or four activities each scoring 2.

From November 2026, there’s an additional requirement: you must also score at least 4 points in a single daily living activity to qualify for the daily living component. Scoring 2 points across four different activities (totalling 8) would no longer be enough.

This change only affects the daily living component. The mobility component is not affected.

Who Does This Affect?

The numbers are stark:

According to DWP figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests: out of 1,283,000 standard daily living awards, 87% (1,116,000) currently score fewer than 4 points in every single activity. Out of 1,608,000 enhanced daily living awards, 13% (209,000) score fewer than 4 points in all activities. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates around 800,000 people could lose the daily living component by 2029-30.

Current Status (February 2026)

The political history here matters. The 4-point rule was initially included in the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill. In July 2025, 49 Labour MPs rebelled against the Bill, forcing concessions. Minister Timms subsequently confirmed in a parliamentary answer that the rule “will apply to new claims and award reviews from November 2026, subject to parliamentary approval.”

Where things stand now (subject to the Bill receiving Royal Assent):

• The 4-point rule will apply to new PIP claims from November 2026
• Existing claimants will keep their current award until their next scheduled review after November 2026 — at which point the 4-point rule will apply to them too
• If your review happens before November 2026, the current rules apply
• People above State Pension age are not routinely fully reviewed and Minister Timms has said they “will not be affected by the proposed changes”
• The mobility component is completely unaffected

The Timms Review

Running in parallel is the Timms Review — the first full review of PIP since it was introduced in 2013. It’s co-chaired by Sir Stephen Timms (Minister for Social Security and Disability), Sharon Brennan, and Dr Clenton Farquharson CBE.

A 12-member steering group was appointed in February 2026, with most members having lived experience of disability or PIP claiming. The review will examine the role of PIP in supporting disabled people, whether the current assessment criteria are fair and fit for purpose, and how the PIP assessment connects to wider support.

The review is due to report to the Secretary of State by autumn 2026. No further changes to PIP criteria will be made before then (beyond the 4-point rule for new claims). But whatever the review recommends could be put into effect relatively quickly — some changes might only need secondary legislation.

(Sources: The Timms Review — GOV.UK; Timms Review February 2026 update; HMCTS Tribunal Statistics Quarterly Jul-Sep 2025)

How to Work Out Your Own PIP Score

Before your assessment — or before challenging a decision — it’s worth working through each activity yourself. Here’s how:

• Step 1: Go through each of the 12 activities above. For each one, identify the descriptor that best matches your situation on most days (more than half the time).
• Step 2: Apply the reliability test. For each activity, ask: Can I do this safely? To an acceptable standard? As many times a day as I’d need to? In a reasonable time? If the answer to any is no, move to the next descriptor up.
• Step 3: Write down your highest-scoring descriptor for each activity. Be specific about why that descriptor applies — what happens when you try, what goes wrong, what help you need.
• Step 4: Add up your daily living descriptors (activities 1-10) separately from your mobility descriptors (activities 11-12).
• Step 5: Check your totals against the thresholds below.
• Step 6: Gather evidence for each descriptor you’ve identified. The strongest evidence comes from professionals who know your condition — GPs, consultants, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, community psychiatric nurses, social workers. Ask them to describe specifically how your condition affects these daily activities.

Don’t understate your difficulties. We’ve helped hundreds of claimants through this process and the most common mistake is being too optimistic about what you can manage. Describe your worst days. Describe what happens when you try. Describe the consequences.

Scored Yourself But Got Rejected?

If you’ve scored yourself and believe the DWP got it wrong, you’re in good company. According to DWP data, around 70% of PIP appeals heard at a First-tier Tribunal are decided in the claimant’s favour (source: DWP PIP Statistics to April 2025). And 59% of those wins came because the tribunal interpreted the same evidence differently — not because new evidence was submitted. That tells you how often the DWP gets it wrong the first time.

Our professional appeal letters are written using the exact legal criteria and descriptor language that tribunals look for. The service costs £49 — whether you need a mandatory reconsideration letter or a tribunal appeal letter.