For councils

Most Personal Independence Payment Mandatory Reconsiderations do not change the original decision. Department for Work and Pensions statistics show 26 to 28 per cent of cleared Mandatory Reconsiderations led to a change in the award, in the year to April 2026. The same release shows 65 per cent of decisions that reach a full tribunal hearing are overturned.

That gap sits at the stage residents reach first: Mandatory Reconsideration, decided on the papers, before any tribunal is involved. Finally Seen gives a resident a document that sets out their own account of their condition against the same evidence points a decision maker looks for, at that first stage.

Source: DWP, Personal Independence Payment Official Statistics to April 2026, gov.uk. The 26-28% figure is cleared Mandatory Reconsiderations excluding withdrawn cases. The 65% figure is decisions cleared at a tribunal hearing, a different denominator to the MR figure and to the other appeal percentages in the same release, stated separately per the release's own caveat.

• Residents.

  Residents get free access to the same evidence pack and letter products we publish to the public, reached through a council-branded entry point. They enter their own information and receive their own document. Free services are named first on every page a resident sees.

• Welfare rights and financial inclusion staff.

  Named staff get a bounded number of seats, used to review what a resident has produced before it goes anywhere. Seats are counted, and the count is stated in the contract.

• The officer.

  The commissioning officer gets a quarterly report formatted for a Crisis and Resilience Fund monitoring return: aggregate counts, the reporting period, and the definitions used to produce each figure.

£4,999 total for a 12-month fixed term.

The term is fixed and ends on a stated date. There is no automatic renewal and no option to extend written into the contract. Renewal is a fresh decision and a fresh purchase order.

Payable in one invoice, or invoiced monthly inside the term at £416.58 for eleven months and £416.62 in the twelfth. We do not quote a monthly price, because the contract is annual.

For context, that total is 0.11 per cent of the median 2026-27 Crisis and Resilience Fund allocation to an upper-tier or unitary authority in England (£4,695,333, Grant Determination 31/8363 Annex A).

All prices are in pounds sterling and are the total payable. We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is added to these prices and no VAT is charged. The total payable is the figure stated above, with no VAT added. If we become registered for VAT, VAT will be added at the prevailing rate and this page will say so before it takes effect.

• Up to 500 residents in the 12-month term.
• Up to 5 adviser seats.
• The council-branded entry route.
• Four quarterly reports.

Two larger tiers exist, at published totals for the same fixed 12-month term.

• Not a health care service.
• Not regulated advice.
• Not debt advice, which is a regulated financial activity requiring FCA authorisation.
• Not a benefits calculator.
• Not representation at a tribunal.
• Not a replacement for the council's own advice service.
• Not a data-matching or targeting tool.

The documents are the resident's own account, structured into a formal format, with factual claims checked against cited sources such as published NHS guidance and the benefit regulations. They are not regulated advice, and we do not present them as advice. Benefits advice is not an activity regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Debt advice is, and we do not do debt advice.

• No resident personal data crosses in either direction.
• The council receives aggregate counts only, with a small-number suppression floor.
• Residents enter their own information and receive their own document.
• A data protection pack is available on request. It covers controllership, retention, encryption, sub-processors and transfers.

• A single stated total, the figure above, for a fixed 12-month term, with no extension option and no auto-renewal, so the contract value under Procurement Act 2023 Schedule 3 is that same single total.
• Below the Local Government Transparency Code 2015 publication lines of £5,000 for an invitation to tender and for a contracts register entry, though the payment will still appear in the authority's own quarterly spend data above £500.
• Below the £30,000 including VAT notifiable-below-threshold trigger for sub-central contracting authorities under Procurement Act 2023 Part 6.
• Check this against your own Contract Procedure Rules. They vary, and some authorities require competitive quotations from a much lower value or from the first pound.

Authorities are required to use Crisis and Resilience Fund funding to implement or further develop Resilience Services (guidance para 95). The guidance names income maximisation, such as through benefit checks and application support, as an example of that activity (para 105), and permits delivery by an external provider. There is no prescribed amount (para 98).

Unspent allocations remain the authority's to deploy across the fund period (1 April 2026 to 31 March 2029), but funding not spent by the end of that period is subject to recovery by government (paras 120, 130).

Sources: Grant Determination 31/8363, Annex B condition 4(e), and the accompanying guidance paras 95, 98, 102, 105, 120, 130 and 131.