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7 years 1 month ago #181978 by SallyB25
Hi everyone, had my letter awarding me 0 points yesterday. I have MS and was on higher mobility and middle care on DLA. SO angry at the accompanying letter; full of contradictions to what I said on the form and during the interview. Apparently, as I work full time I can't be that bad. Never mind I need ten hours' sleep to do this and most of my weekend is spent sleeping! It feels like a complete refusal to recognise what I deal with every day. All sorts more but I could be here forever! Anyway, my question is, how do I start the appeal and what advice do you have? Letter from DWP remarkably scant on detail....

Thanks all.

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7 years 1 month ago #182016 by Gordon
S

Welcome to the forum.

In case you are not aware, your real name appears to be showing in the forum, if you want to change this then follow the instructions in the following FAQ

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I have moved your post to it's own topic, you had posted in a another members result topic, please make all further posts about your PIP in this topic so that we can see everything that has happened and what advice has been given.

The criteria and assessment process for PIP is fundamentally different from DLA and the new benefit has been engineered to reduce the disability budget.

The first stage to challenging a Decision is for you to request a Mandatory Reconsideration, this needs to be done in writing to the DWP, within one month of the Decision, to the office that dealt with your claim, have a look at our PIP MR & Appeal guide for details of the process, the PIP area also has template letters that you can use to make the request with.

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/pip

You should contact the DWP for a copy of the assessment report if you have not already done so, I would phone them but again follow up the request in writing. Once you have the assessment report you will have a better understanding of how the DWP Decision Maker has come to their conclusions and will then be able to argue against them.

Your primary task is to show that you meet the criteria, there are many reasons you may have failed, you need to address each of these but don't get bogged down in criticising the assessment report unless you can clearly show that it is incorrect, it is a lot easier to argue the facts of the situation;

"the assessor recorded that I walked 50m, I did but they have failed to document that I had to stop every 10m for a rest due to breathlessness"

than their opinions

"based on my observations of the claimant walking I believe that they can reliably walk more than 200m.

When you have a better idea of the issues with your claim, come back to the forum and we will do our best to help.

Gordon

Nothing on this board constitutes legal advice - always consult a professional about specific problems

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7 years 1 month ago #182046 by SallyB25
HI everyone,
I have requested my full medical assessment from the face to face today - will be with me in 7-10 working days. As a follow up question, would you recommend I submit extra evidence when I request the mandatory reconsideration or can I add evidence later on? Also, what sort of evidence is appropriate? As it stands, I just have a list of points where what is on the summary report on the Decision Letter is not consistent with what was written on my form and discussed during the face to face. Any advice would be great, thanks.

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7 years 1 month ago #182092 by Gordon

SallyB25 wrote: HI everyone,
I have requested my full medical assessment from the face to face today - will be with me in 7-10 working days. As a follow up question, would you recommend I submit extra evidence when I request the mandatory reconsideration or can I add evidence later on? Also, what sort of evidence is appropriate? As it stands, I just have a list of points where what is on the summary report on the Decision Letter is not consistent with what was written on my form and discussed during the face to face. Any advice would be great, thanks.


If you don't submit the extra evidence with your MR request then the request needs to tell the DWP that you will be sending it separately, they should allow you four weeks from the date on your MR request for you to do this.

Ideally any evidence you submit must confirm the problems you have with completing the PIP activities.

Gordon

Nothing on this board constitutes legal advice - always consult a professional about specific problems
The following user(s) said Thank You: SallyB25

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7 years 1 month ago #182366 by SallyB25
Me again!

Logged the reconsideration immediately as suggested; the call back was the following morning which I didn't expect to come through so quickly. I think I was able to put my case through okay (and wrote it up afterwards), but it was quite alarming what had apparently been typed up during the assessment which increased my suspicions that I wasn't listened to. (Confirmed today when the report itself reached me). I made sure she was keeping the case open to allow me to send extra evidence, but she was adamant I shouldn't send anything that repeated what we had spoken about "as it's all being typed up anyway". Given the inaccurate record from the face to face, would you agree with this? I don't want to antagonise them but equally not entirely confident my views were recorded. I also asked if photos of adaptations I have around the home would be useful as extra evidence but she said no. What do you think?

I'm waiting on a call back from my MS nurse and also Occ Health at work. I'm hoping one of them is able to put forward a more accurate picture of what I can and cannot do regarding the musculo-skeletal exam from the face to face (again reported incorrectly). I'm going to ask Occ Health to list the adaptations to my work environment as well. If you have any other thoughts that would be great, thanks.

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7 years 1 month ago #182392 by Gordon
Sally

It's entirely up to you what arguments that you make or what evidence that you send, the fact that you have already discussed some of the issues is neither here not there, you can still make these arguments in the information you send in.

Gordon

Nothing on this board constitutes legal advice - always consult a professional about specific problems

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