The Attendance Allowance evidence checklist: what to send, skip and never pay for

What evidence should go with an Attendance Allowance claim? Less than the anxious version of you suspects, more than the exhausted version wants to gather - and, crucially, the RIGHT handful rather than the thickest envelope. Decisions are made from the papers, so evidence matters; but the AA1's own answers carry the claim, and enclosures exist to corroborate them, not to substitute. This checklist sorts the whole field: the free documents that do real work, the ones already in your house, the ones worth a phone call, the ones not worth paying for, and the two things you should never send at all.

Tier one: free, decisive, already yours

• The repeat prescription list. The form says it in print: send the prescription list and the medicines boxes at question 16 need not be filled in. One pharmacy printout evidences the entire regime. Nothing else on this page has a better effort-to-effect ratio.
• Clinic letters you already hold. The latest letter from each specialist - cardiology, memory clinic, rheumatology - especially any that mention function ("struggling with stairs", "falls", "needs supervision"). Recent beats comprehensive: one letter per condition from the last year outweighs a decade's archive.
• The discharge summary from any hospital stay: a professional's snapshot of your needs at their clearest.
• A completed Care Needs Diary. A dated fortnight of the real days and nights - evidence you manufacture at the kitchen table, and the perfect corroboration for the frequencies your form claims.

Tier two: worth a phone call

• The care plan, if a care agency or the council is involved - it lists your needs in a format decision makers trust on sight.
• A brief factual GP letter - requested with the topics list, priced before ordering (surgeries may charge), and never allowed to delay the claim itself.
• The CVI (Certificate of Vision Impairment) for sight loss claims - the form's own enclosure list names it.
• Falls service or physiotherapy reports, where they exist - independent confirmation that the risks are clinical.

What the form itself asks you to attach

Question 65 is a printed enclosure list - use it as the packing slip. It expects you to tick and list what you are sending (prescription list, reports, care plan, CVI), which quietly confirms the rule above: the DWP anticipates a FEW documents, not a lever-arch file. Two mechanical rules from the form: send copies, never originals, because nothing is returned; and if anything continues on loose sheets, the claimant's name and National Insurance number go on every page.

What NOT to pay for

A small industry sells worried families expensive paper. Skip: private "medical reports" commissioned for the claim (the DWP can ask your GP directly, free, with the consent you sign at question 20); private occupational-therapy assessments bought purely as evidence; and anything marketed as a promised-win dossier - no one can guarantee an outcome, and decision makers read commissioned advocacy with exactly the scepticism you would expect. The one paid document sometimes worth it is the modest GP letter, and only at a sensible price - never let anyone quote three figures for it without asking what tier-one evidence you already hold for free.

What never to send

Originals - of anything: nothing comes back, so the wedding-drawer birth certificate and the only copy of a consultant letter stay home, photocopied. And padding: the 90-page hospital archive, the printouts about your condition from the internet, the years-old letters contradicting the current picture. Padding is not neutral - it buries the good evidence, slows the decision, and occasionally introduces a stray sentence ("managing well", written in a better year) that argues against you. Curate like a lawyer: everything in the envelope should support the form's answers or explain them.

The evidence is the form: the answers themselves

The strongest evidence in the envelope is the AA1 done properly - frequencies not adjectives, nights in times and minutes, the falls at question 34 in counts and dates, the aids table's third column, the carer statement at questions 55 to 62 written by the person who knows. A decision maker met by that form plus a prescription list and one good clinic letter has everything a paper decision needs - which is why the walkthrough matters more than any document on this page. Enclosures corroborate; the form persuades.

Matching evidence to claim type

• Prompting and memory claims (dementia, depression): the carer statement above everything, memory-clinic or mental-health letters, a GP record that actually mentions the prompting.
• Danger claims (falls, seizures, blackouts): the dated incident log - counts, injuries, who helped - plus any falls-service or A&E paper.
• Treatment-heavy claims (dialysis, oxygen, insulin): the schedule in writing - unit letters, oxygen prescriptions, the regime the prescription list proves.
• Fluctuating claims (arthritis flares, COPD): the diary across a full cycle, so the pattern is dated fact rather than assertion.

Evidence after the claim goes in

The checklist keeps working post-submission. New letters that arrive mid-wait can be sent on with your National Insurance number. If the decision disappoints, the reconsideration runs on targeted additions - the diary fortnight, the expanded carer statement, the letter that answers the specific refusal reason. And the file you built becomes the household archive that makes every future review or renewal an evening's work: original form copy, award letter, each year's additions, one folder.

Scotland: the checklist shrinks further

For Pension Age Disability Payment, Social Security Scotland asks for one piece of professional supporting information where possible - and can collect it for you, with your permission. The tier-one logic still applies (prescription list, the best single letter, the diary), but the chasing is optional: name the professional and let Scotland fetch. The full Scottish evidence picture is in PADP supporting information.

The one-envelope test

Before sealing anything, run the test a decision maker unconsciously runs: could a stranger, given only this envelope, reconstruct your ordinary Tuesday and your worst night? The form's answers should do most of that alone; each enclosure should add one verifiable strut - the regime (prescription list), the diagnosis-and-function anchor (clinic letter), the dated pattern (diary), the independent witness (carer statement). If a document adds no strut, it is padding; if a strut has no document, a phone call this week probably fixes it. Most claims pass the test with four to six sheets beyond the form itself.

A worked example bundle

For a concrete picture, here is a strong envelope for a typical mixed claim (arthritis, heart trouble, broken nights): the completed AA1 with the carer statement filled in; the pharmacy's repeat list (both conditions' regimes in one sheet); this year's cardiology letter mentioning breathlessness; the rheumatology letter mentioning grip and stairs; a 14-day diary with the night column completed; and a photocopy of the falls note the GP made in March. Six enclosures, every one pulling weight, nothing the decision maker must dig through. The identical logic scales down (a single-condition claim might enclose two) and up (a dialysis claim adds the unit schedule) - the principle is struts, not thickness.

Copies, postage and proof

The unglamorous mechanics that protect everything: photocopy the entire form and every enclosure before posting (a future review or challenge starts from knowing exactly what was sent); use the envelope's freepost address - Freepost DWP Attendance Allowance, nothing else on the envelope; and note the posting date where you keep the copies. If anything was sent separately later, log that too. Households with a complete shadow file answer every future question in minutes - and never lose an argument about what the DWP was or was not told.

The checklist, in one glance

• Prescription list - in.
• Newest letter per condition - in.
• Care plan / discharge summary if they exist - in.
• 14-day diary - in.
• Carer statement - completed on the form.
• GP letter - only if cheap, brief and prompt.
• Archives, originals, internet printouts, commissioned reports - out.
• Photocopies of everything - kept.

Print this list, lay the envelope's contents against it, and post with a clear conscience - then let the process do its work.

A final reframe for the evidence-anxious: this benefit was designed to be decided on an honest form plus a modest bundle, because its claimants are people for whom document-chasing is itself a hardship. Meeting the system's actual expectations - sharp, small, corroborating - is not cutting corners; it is how the well-advised claim. The corners you must never cut live in the form's own answers, and that guide is where the real work happens.

Envelope packed to the list above, copies filed, date noted: the evidence job is finished - properly, cheaply, and in one sitting.

And should anyone later ask what was sent, the shadow file answers in one minute flat.

Common questions