SDA-ESA: My journey has begun

Mari

A tentative congratulations.

ATOS have made a recommendation on "scrutiny", this means that they had sufficient information to do so without seeing you.

You cannot be found Fit for Work without a face to face assessment so they are saying that you should be placed in the WRAG or the Support Group, you will have to wait to see what the DM says.

The DWP are unlikely to phone you, I would expect that they will write to you with their Decision within the next couple of weeks, if they don't then I would chase them for an update. There should be a formal Decision Notice and you will probably also receive a statement of payments (even if it is exactly the same as you are currently getting).

Gordon

MariW wrote: Hi Gordon

A couple more questions:

1. If I don’t hear anything by, say two weeks from today, how do I contact the DWP? Is it via the address or phone number on the migration notice letter?
2. Is it likely the DPW will follow the exact ATOS recommendation or is there room for manoeuvre in the claimants’ favour? As stated in earlier posts, a duplicate of everything went to the DM

Mari

Yes contact the DWP office who are dealing with your transfer.

The DM is not obliged to follow the ATOS recommendation although it would be unusual for them not to do so, in your case they have three options;

- remit the report back to ATOS with instructions for them to carry out a face to face (I am not aware of this ever happening although it would not necessarily be obvious to the claimant that it had, unless they were regularly chasing ATOS for an update)

- accept the recommendation and place you in the suggested group

- finally they can disagree with the group placements and move you up to the SG or down to the WRAG as appropriate. We do see this happen on the forum, most often it is up to the SG but a few members have been pushed down to the WRAG by the DM

Gordon