"Disabled people and people with long-term health conditions know better than anyone how PIP works in real life." With that, Timms Review co-chair Dr Clenton Farquharson has opened the door to a new round of public involvement in one of the most argued-over parts of the benefits system. The Department for Work and Pensions says 15 workshops will be held online and in person during September and October 2026, with applications opening at 10am on Wednesday 12 August and closing at 5pm on Friday 21 August. The aim is to test and tighten the review’s early recommendations before its final report is handed over this autumn.

For disabled people across the North, this is where a national policy row becomes something much more immediate. PIP is not just a line in Whitehall spending plans. It can mean whether someone can stay in work, keep up with extra travel costs, or manage daily life without being pushed through another draining assessment. That is why the review’s interim report cut through. It said PIP is no longer fit for purpose, after hearing from people who described the assessment and decision-making process as stressful and dehumanising. The benefit itself remains widely valued, but the system wrapped around it has been accused of creating fresh barriers instead of removing them.

The workshops are mainly aimed at disabled people and people with long-term health conditions, though carers, family members and support workers can also register interest. No background in policy work is needed, which may make this feel more open than the usual government exercise where the same professional voices dominate the room. The review says these sessions are not simply about collecting more personal testimony. Participants will be asked to discuss, challenge and refine emerging recommendations, with the promise that real-life experience will be used to test whether the final package is fairer, clearer and workable in practice.

Dr Farquharson has been explicit about what is at stake. He said the purpose is not only to hear what people have been through, but to check whether the proposed changes stand up against real lives. He has also said he is committed to showing how people’s contributions influence the recommendations that finally go forward. That point matters. Disabled people have heard plenty of consultation language before, and many will judge this exercise on whether it changes the tone of the system as much as the wording of the report. If PIP is to work properly, people will want more than sympathetic phrasing. They will want a process that feels less punishing and less stacked against them from the start.

Alongside the workshops, the review will also test its thinking with Disabled People’s Organisations, charities and MPs over the same period. The Department for Work and Pensions says that work builds on more than 38,000 responses to the call for evidence, as well as earlier workshops and engagement with disabled people, campaign groups and subject specialists. That is a sizeable body of evidence, and it underlines how politically sensitive this review has become. Ministers now have on record not only support for PIP as a vital benefit, but a sustained case that the current assessment model is wearing people down. The final report, due in autumn 2026, will have to answer that frustration with something more solid than administrative tidying-up.

Selected participants will be told by 4 September 2026. Places will be allocated at random, but the steering group says it will check the final group reflects a balanced spread of characteristics, and where a group is under-represented it will draw at random from the wider applicant pool to fill the gap. For readers considering whether to put their name forward, the significance is straightforward enough. This is one of the clearer chances to press the case before recommendations go to government, rather than after the decisions have been settled elsewhere. Applications are open through GOV.UK, and for many people far from Westminster, that chance to be heard will be the point of the whole exercise.