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The DWP has spoken about its work to make sure people get the benefit payments they are entitled to. Top officials from the department urged claimants to "please let us know" if your situation changes as you could get more payments.

Speaking to an MP committee, the department said the biggest area where people don't get their due is for disability benefits, especially PIP (Personal Independence Payment). A common reason for benefit claimants missing out on payments is because they don't tell the DWP when their situation has changed.

DWP permanent secretary Peter Schofield said: "For most of our benefits, we do rely on the claimant letting us know about a change in circumstance. One of the key things we are increasingly trying to do more of is to remind people to let us know, to make it easier for people to let us know.

"We're running a new campaign called 'Tell us too'. When something has changed in your circumstance, you might tell a friend about it, but can you also tell DWP. Please let us know about a change of circumstance, and we can make a difference. That is about adjusting up and adjusting down [payments]."

He said the department is also working on creating a 'customer account' which brings together all your DWP benefits in one place. He said: "The idea is we will get to a point where you can make a change of circumstance on that system and that will then be replicated across all the DWP benefits that you might be receiving. There's a load of work we are doing on that."

Mr Schofield put the spotlight on one key area: "The biggest area of unfulfilled eligibility is around disability benefits, particularly PIP. There's a number of things we are doing on that front."

He said one group who commonly miss out are people already claiming PIP, whose health condition gets worse, meaning they are entitled to a "higher premium within PIP".

PIP covers the extra costs associated with having a long-term health condition, illness or disability. How much you get depends on the extent to which your condition affects you, with lower and higher rates for both a daily living part and a mobility part. The benefit is not means tested, meaning your income and savings do not affect how much you get.

These are the current weekly rates, with the benefit usually paid every four weeks:

Daily living part

• Lower - £73.90
• Higher - £110.40.

Mobility part

• Lower - £29.20
• Higher - £77.05.

Your eligibility for either part is independent of the other. You can get nothing for one element while getting either the lower or the higher rate for the other one.

So the least a current claimant would be on is £29.20 a week, or £116.80 each four-week pay period. If your condition sadly worsened and you then qualified for both higher rates, you would be moved up to £187.45 a week, or £749.80 each pay period, a £633 increase to your pay packet.

Mr Schofield said his team is looking at how to "encourage people to come forward and let us know about a worsening in their health condition".

He explained: "We prioritise those requests when they come in, to make sure that they get access to a health assessment quickly, so we can put that right quickly. So they are towards the top of the queue, in that heath assessments process for PIP, alongside new claims."

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