PIP Home assessment request/ insufficient evidence

I recieved a telephone message to contact Capita after sending an earlier Email outlining my Husband being unable to attend a face to face assessment outside the home due to the severity of his condition.

I spoke to a lady called ??? this morning at 09.30 17/12/2015.


The lady called ??? told me that "you need to have a face to face assessment due to "insufficient evidence " being supplied along with the PIP claim form."


I asked the operator whether she had Read Phsychiatric medical report which was submitted to Capita along with 6 other letters/ documents from various Doctors and included proof of my Husbands continued in patient psychiatric treatment via the war pensions Agency treatment programme.


The lady told me that she was aware of some additional documentation , but had not read it. ??

She then kept me on hold whilst she spoke to someone and came back to say that I had to ring again on Monday ?

Surely If there is insufficent evidence and Capita need more of it, and if that involves a face to face assessment with my Husband then they can carry it out at our Home, as a reasonable adjustment for his disability, under the equality act. which has already been requested twice so far.

It appears that they are avoiding answering our request for a home based face to face, despite it being included on section 12 page 36 of the PIP claim form submitted with the 7 other supporting Documents, and me requesting it again in a seperate email earlier this week.

I intend to email them again and ask them to confirm that they have recieved and read all the supporting documentation and also to request that if they deem the information we submitted so far as insufficient, then they arrange for a Home Based assessment, under the equality act which at the moment is an issue they seem to be avoiding engaging me in.
Has anyone else come across this type of behaviour when dealing with a PIP claim.?

My Husband is getting extremely agitated over this whole affair and he feels he still has to Justify himself 33 years after he was in a War fighting for a country thats supposed to have a covenent with its Veterans to take care of them if they are injured.

The Irony smacks you in the face when you see politicians gagging to start another war and sending more of our young men to get maimed and injured on the Battlefield . I pray there isnt another War as anyone injured will be left on the scrap heap.
Its Just History repeating itself.

When my Father was in the 2nd world war they said Britain would be "A land fit for heroes" and when it was over there were thousands of men sleeping in shop doorways under bridges etc , after their lives were shattered by their wartime experiences.
....nothing changed here then
Rant Over

Hi

Glad to hear you are fighting the resistance to a home assessment.
There does seem to be some people finding their request, even though supported by a GP letter, is being denied which is contrary to the guidnce given by the DWP.
We always recommend that those who feel able fight this decision as they have genuine reasons for wanting a home assessment and they have a right to ask for one.
Obviously home assessments take up more time and resources than calling claimants into a centre one after the other. However it has not been officially withdrawn so please keep up your fight and let us know any further problems. We may need to start collating information on how regularly this is occurring.

I suspect it's all down to the way they pay HPs. Iif you can sit in one place and bang out 6- 8 assessments a day and get between £120-£150 for each one, why would you give that earning power up to only get through a max of 4 per day.

After sending an email to Capita requesting they confirm receiving and also requesting they confirm reading the supporting evidence, we had an Answerphone message stating "our systems are not set up for us to answer emails ??

If ever there was a contrived way of running a system to disadvantage the claimant -this seems to be it !

They obviously dont want to put anything down in writing to state they have read our supporting evidence (which is very comprehensive) that way if there is a case review after not giving an award - they wont be accused of not taking supporting evidence into account - they can just say "we didnt recieve it".
I did however send the whole bundle , claim form and supporing evidence in a signed for registered post envelope.
so Glad I did and I strongly advise everyone else to do the same.

We have been asked to ring them again to discuss our "query"

I can see by the way they are handling this application so far, that they have an agenda to not award PIP by fair means or foul.
They will not acknowledge our request under the equality Act nor discuss it with us.
They used the line "if your Husband cant come for a face to face assessment then we will have to make a decision on the information we have recieved"

Even though the operator on the previous phone conversation first stated there was insufficient evidence- then said she hadnt read the supporting evidence !!

So by stating there is insufficent evidence , surely they have a remit from DWP to gather more of it... but they conveniently refuse to acknowledge request for home visit, then it looks very much like this application is alreadybeing engineered for them to give no award .

For them to state theres insufficent evidence before even reading the evidence we sent in , telegraphs their intention loud and clear.

I have already taken my husbands case to court and they ruled that my husband was classed as disabled, and the case that followed for disability discrimination was successful for my husband the plaintif

I will not hesitate to take this further and I am already putting mechanisms in place to do so.

Its going to be a Happy Christmas in our House isnt it with all this Hanging over our heads!

Sorry to hear of your predicamnet but sending you lots of positive energy for your stand.

It is hard to fight such an unjust, unequal opponent but fully winnable as you know, even if it comes to an upper level tribunal they need reminding by judges that they can't treat people in this way and expect to win.

Sorry to hear this but really not surprised.

I have been reading the equality act myself and I doubt Atos or Capita have bothered (or it's a case of 'Animal Farm').

Gllad to hear you won your court case though.