The Short Answer
To estimate DLA back pay, subtract the weekly DLA you were paid from the weekly PIP now awarded and multiply by the weeks in the window, pricing each week at its own year's rate from 2022/23. Where the PIP award is higher, the difference over the window is the back-pay estimate; where it is lower, nothing is owed to you and the tool shows £0.00.
How to work out DLA back pay?
Three inputs decide the estimate: the DLA you were getting, the PIP now awarded, and the window the difference should cover. DLA pays a care component at three rates and mobility at two; PIP pays daily living and mobility at two rates each. The calculator maps both benefits year by year, using the same DWP publications for each.
DLA Back Pay in Detail
Most DLA back pay questions are transfer questions, and the transfer works in one direction: working-age DLA claimants are invited to claim PIP, and the DLA award ends as the PIP one begins. The PIP Back Pay Calculator UK handles back pay within PIP itself; this tool covers the gap the transfer can create when PIP entitlement runs from an earlier date than PIP payments began.
The rates behind the comparison, at 2026/27 values:
| Benefit and component | Rates a week |
|---|---|
| DLA care | £30.30 lowest, £76.70 middle, £114.60 highest |
| DLA mobility | £30.30 lower, £80.00 higher |
| PIP daily living | £76.70 standard, £114.60 enhanced |
| PIP mobility | £30.30 standard, £80.00 enhanced |
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The table shows why transfers often owe nothing: the amounts mirror each other at most levels. Money arises where the PIP award lands higher than the old DLA combination, most commonly when middle-rate care becomes enhanced daily living, or lower-rate mobility becomes enhanced mobility. The history of the transfer, and who ended up owed what, is covered in DLA to PIP, and how the two benefits' rules differ is set out in PIP vs DLA.
Children's DLA and pension-age DLA continue as their own benefits and are outside this tool. For a tribunal or reconsideration that changed a PIP award after transfer, the homepage back pay calculator prices that window directly.
A worked example makes the mechanics concrete. A claimant paid middle-rate care and lower-rate mobility, £107.00 a week at 2026/27 values, is awarded enhanced daily living and enhanced mobility, £194.60. Over a 26-week window entirely inside 2026/27, the £87.60 weekly difference produces £2,277.60. The same transfer awarded standard daily living and standard mobility pays £107.00 a week, identical to the old DLA total, and produces no back pay at all.
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The example carries the general lesson: transfer back pay lives or dies on the component mapping, not the transfer itself. Care-to-daily-living and mobility-to-mobility comparisons decide everything, and the calculator runs both across every year your window touches.
Where the windows come from
Transfer windows arise from gaps the process itself creates, and they cluster in three patterns. Decision gaps appear when the PIP decision takes effect from a date earlier than its first payment, leaving priced-but-unpaid weeks. Challenge gaps appear when a transfer decision is corrected at reconsideration or tribunal: the corrected PIP award reaches back over months in which DLA amounts were actually paid, and the difference is owed. Error gaps appear when the DWP finds a transfer was mishandled, occasionally years later, and recalculates from the original point.
In each pattern the calculator's two dates bound the recalculated period, and the DLA entered is what was genuinely paid across it. The tool then does what the DWP's own recalculation does: prices both benefits year by year and settles the difference.
DLA rates behind the tool, by year
The comparison holds five years of both benefits' rates, from 2022/23 onwards, all drawn from the DWP benefit and pension rates publications. DLA's care component ran £24.45 to £92.40 a week in 2022/23 against £30.30 to £114.60 today, with mobility moving from £24.45 and £64.50 to £30.30 and £80.00 over the same span. Older windows than the table covers are clamped and flagged rather than guessed, and the result says so when it happens.
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One boundary keeps the tool honest: it estimates the transfer difference, never DLA entitlement itself. Working-age DLA no longer takes new claims, so the live question is always what PIP owes across the changeover, and that is the question the two date fields ask. The five weekly DLA amounts for this year and the four years before it are listed in DLA Rates 2026/27.
As with every tool on this site, the figures beneath the estimate are dated, sourced, and rechecked whenever the publications behind them change.
DLA Rates for 2026/27
DLA pays its care component at £30.30, £76.70 or £114.60 a week and its mobility component at £30.30 or £80.00 a week in 2026/27, and these are the amounts this calculator compares against PIP. The figures below are the weekly rates GOV.UK publishes, with the PIP rate each one sits beside in a transfer.
| DLA component and rate | Weekly amount | The PIP amount it matches |
|---|---|---|
| Care, lowest rate | £30.30 | No PIP daily living equivalent |
| Care, middle rate | £76.70 | Daily living, standard rate |
| Care, highest rate | £114.60 | Daily living, enhanced rate |
| Mobility, lower rate | £30.30 | Mobility, standard rate |
| Mobility, higher rate | £80.00 | Mobility, enhanced rate |
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The pairing explains the arithmetic of every transfer. Lowest-rate care has no daily living match, so a claimant on it who is awarded standard daily living gains £46.40 a week, and one awarded no daily living loses £30.30. For adults the DLA rates matter only as the "before" figure: GOV.UK states that anyone over 16 "cannot apply for DLA", and directs working-age claimants in England and Wales to PIP instead.
Work Out Your Number
Two award selections and two dates produce the estimate. Where the answer is not £0.00, your decision letter should show the same figure; work out your DLA back pay above and compare.