DLA and Severe Disablement Allowance

PolicyEngine UK models two legacy DWP disability benefits alongside the current PIP (covered in its own page):

• Disability Living Allowance (DLA) — closed to new working-age claims in April 2013 but still paid to existing recipients and to children under 16.

• Severe Disablement Allowance (SDA) — closed to new claims in April 2001 and replaced by Incapacity Benefit / ESA / Universal Credit; legacy recipients continue to receive it.

Both are non-means-tested and are added directly into the household_benefits aggregate (via the dla and sda variables in its adds list).

Disability Living Allowance¶

DLA has two independent components, each with its own band structure:

A claimant’s band on each component is taken from the dataset inputs dla_m_category and dla_sc_category (each an enum on Person). For each band the formula multiplies the published weekly rate by WEEKS_IN_YEAR to produce an annual amount; the combined award is

dla = dla_sc + dla_m

i.e. a recipient on the higher mobility rate and the higher self-care rate stacks both, producing the maximum DLA award.

Eligibility (informational)¶

PolicyEngine doesn’t re-derive eligibility for DLA because the dataset records categorical band assignments rather than the underlying self-care / mobility activity scores. New claims have been routed to PIP for working-age claimants since April 2013, so the population that remains on DLA is overwhelmingly:

• children under 16 (DLA continues to be available),

• adults who were on DLA on 8 April 2013 and have not yet been migrated to PIP at reassessment.

Migration to PIP is handled by the calibration step in policyengine-uk-data, not by a re-derivation here.

Severe Disablement Allowance¶

SDA is a single weekly flat-rate payment, exposed as the variable sda. Eligibility is treated as binary and read straight from the dataset input sda_reported:

sda = (sda_reported > 0) * gov.dwp.sda.maximum * WEEKS_IN_YEAR

The model assumes recipients are entitled to the maximum age-related addition. This is a deliberate simplification: SDA was closed to new claims in 2001 and the remaining caseload is small and old enough that nearly all recipients qualify for the highest age-related addition.

References¶

• DLA primary statute: Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 s. 71.

• DLA closure to new working-age claims: Welfare Reform Act 2012 Part 4 and The Personal Independence Payment (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/387).

• DWP, Disability Living Allowance: detailed information.

• SDA primary statute: Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 s. 68 (since repealed for new claims).

• SDA closure to new claims: The Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999 s. 65.

• DWP, DLA and SDA caseload statistics used by policyengine-uk-data for calibration.