Disability Living Allowance
Living allowance
Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is a social security benefit in the United Kingdom paid to eligible claimants who have personal care and/or mobility needs as a result of a mental or physical disability. It is tax-free, non-means-tested and non-contributory. The benefit was established by the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, integrating the former benefits Mobility Allowance and Attendance Allowance and introducing two additional lower rates of benefit. Prior to 2013 it could be claimed by UK residents aged under sixty five years. However, the benefit was phased-out for the majority of claimants between 2013 and 2015 and replaced by a new Personal Independence Payment. DLA can still be claimed by children under sixteen and can still be received by existing claimants who were aged sixty five or over on 8 April 2013.
Eligibility
DLA is restricted to people who fall into all of the following categories:
They must ordinarily be resident and present in the UK
They must meet the rules concerning age: new DLA claims can only be made if the claimant is under 16; however existing claimants can continue to claim DLA if they were born on or before 8 April 1948.
They must not be living in certain types of residential accommodation
They must have had a disability for at least three months, and expect it to continue for at least six more months
They must have care and/or mobility needs.
Usually, to qualify for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for children the child must:
Be under sixteen
Need extra looking after or have walking difficulties
Be in Great Britain, another European Economic Area (EEA) country or Switzerland when you claim - there are some exceptions, e.g. family members of the Armed Forces
Be habitually resident in the UK, Ireland, Isle of Man or the Channel Islands
Not be subject to immigration control
Have lived in Great Britain for two of the last three years, if over 3 years old
Children under the age of three.
“Disability Living Allowance” enters the record as living allowance. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Disability, Living and Allowance can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Disability Living Allowance” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Disability, Living and Allowance provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5281175. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1992, 2013, 2015 and 1948.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Disability Living Allowance”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Disability Living Allowance primary sources, Disability Living Allowance archive and Disability research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Disability Living Allowance”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Disability Living Allowance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.