The Attendance Allowance form: how to fill it in and what to say

Attendance Allowance is worth £76.70 or £114.60 a week, which is up to £5,959 a year. It is not means tested, it is not taxable, and your savings and pension make no difference to it.

Hundreds of thousands of people who qualify never claim it. The form is the reason. It is long, it asks the same thing in several different ways, and it is written in a way that encourages exactly the answers that get claims refused.

This is a walkthrough of what each part is really asking.

Before you start: phone for the form

You can claim online, but there is a reason to phone the DWP for a paper form first.

When you request the form by phone, the DWP stamps it with the date of your call. If you return the completed form within six weeks, your claim is treated as starting on that date rather than the date they receive it. At £114.60 a week, six weeks of backdating is worth over £680.

Take the time to fill it in properly, and you lose nothing by doing so.

The rule that decides everything

The test is the help you need, not the help you get.

This is the single most important thing to understand. The form asks question after question about what you can and cannot do, and most people answer by describing an average day where they cope. If you live alone and have adapted, you probably do cope. That is not the question.

The question is what a reasonable person would say you need help with, or need someone keeping an eye on you for, to be safe and to look after yourself properly.

So:

• If you have not had a bath in two years because you are frightened of falling, you need help with bathing. Do not write “I don’t have baths”.
• If you live on toast because cooking is too difficult, you need help preparing food. Do not write “I manage my own meals”.
• If your daughter phones every morning to check you have taken your tablets, you need help with medication, whether or not she is in the room.

Section by section

Your details and your condition

Straightforward, but list every condition, not just the main one. Arthritis plus poor eyesight plus a heart condition plus anxiety is a very different picture from arthritis alone, and the combined effect is what matters.

Include medication and the side effects. Drowsiness, dizziness and frequent trips to the toilet are all relevant.

Do you have difficulty with…

This is the core of the form. Each activity has the same shape: can you do it, how long does it take, do you need help, how often, and what happens if nobody helps.

Answer for a bad day, and how often bad days happen. If three days a week you cannot get dressed without help, say that. The form has space for it and the DWP is required to consider variability.

For each activity, try to cover four things:

1. What exactly is difficult. Not “washing is hard” but “I cannot lift my left arm above shoulder height so I cannot wash my hair or my back”.
2. How long it takes. “It takes me 40 minutes to dress, where it used to take 5.”
3. What help you need. Physical help, prompting, supervision, or someone to do it for you.
4. What happens without help. This is the one people leave out, and it is the one that carries the most weight. “If nobody prompts me I forget to take my evening tablets” is a much stronger answer than “I need help with tablets”.

Supervision and keeping safe

Do not skip this because you have not had an accident yet. Supervision is about risk, not history.

Relevant things: falls or near falls, leaving the cooker on, getting confused about where you are, wandering, not recognising danger, panic attacks, unsteadiness on stairs, blackouts, seizures.

Night time

The night section decides whether you get the lower or the higher rate, so it is worth real attention.

The higher rate is for people who need help or supervision both day and night. Night time counts as when the household has gone to bed.

Things that count: needing help to the toilet, needing help to turn over or get comfortable, needing medication, needing someone to check on you, being awake and distressed, needing help if you fall.

If someone has to get up to you, say how many times and how long each time takes.

How often, and for how long

There is usually a box asking how many times a day or week something happens. Fill these in with numbers. “Sometimes” and “occasionally” are the weakest words you can use on this form. “Four or five times a week” is assessable. “Sometimes” is not.

The phrases that cost people money

Cross these out of your vocabulary before you start:

• “I manage.” You may well manage. The question is what it costs you to manage and what you have given up in order to manage.
• “I’m fine most of the time.” If you have bad days, describe them and say how often.
• “My daughter does that.” Say what you would need if she did not. The claim is about your needs, not her availability.
• “Not applicable.” If an activity is not applicable because you have stopped doing it due to your condition, say exactly that.
• “Sometimes.” Replace with a frequency.

The extra sheet

There is never enough space on the form. Use extra paper, write the question number at the top of each sheet, put your name and National Insurance number on every page, and tick the box on the form saying you have included extra sheets.

Nobody has ever been refused for writing too much detail. Plenty have been refused for writing too little.

Getting help with the form

Free, and worth using:

• Age UK runs form-filling appointments through local branches.
• Citizens Advice does the same and knows how the local decision makers work.
• Your GP surgery may have a social prescriber or care coordinator who does this regularly.
• Carers UK if you are completing it on behalf of someone you care for.

None of these charge. Be wary of anyone who does.

After you send it

Take a photocopy or photograph of every page before posting. If the DWP loses it, or if you need to challenge the decision, you will need to know exactly what you said.

Decisions usually arrive within a few weeks. Attendance Allowance rarely involves a face to face assessment, unlike PIP.

If you are refused, ask for a mandatory reconsideration within one month. A significant proportion of refusals are overturned, particularly where the original form was thin on the “what happens without help” answers.

What claiming can unlock

Attendance Allowance is not just the weekly payment. Getting it can also:

• Increase Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction, because it triggers extra amounts in those calculations
• Let a family member claim Carer’s Allowance, currently £86.45 a week
• Support a blue badge application
• Count towards a council care assessment

It is never deducted from another benefit. Claiming it cannot leave you worse off.

Check before you start

Our Attendance Allowance checker walks through the same day and night tests the DWP applies, so you can see which rate your situation points to before you commit to the form.