Support Vs Working ESA

Lawd2715 wrote: Hello,
My husband has been on ESA Support Group while he has been ill. He underwent chemo treatment in 2012-13. Unfortunately, the virus has come back again and is waiting to start treatment in the next 3 months.How can they change someone from Support Group ESA to JSA and not the Work related ESA? Isn't that a huge jump from sick to Full Time work?
Thank you for any advice.
Kind regards
Lisa

Has your husband been found Fit for Work?

The first stage to challenging a Decision is for him 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 his claim, have a look at our ESA MR & Appeal guide for details of the process, the ESA area also has template letters that he can use to make the request with.

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/esa1

He should contact the DWP for a copy of the assessment report (ESA85), if he has not already done so, I would phone them but again follow up the request in writing. Once he has the assessment report he 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.

His primary task is to show that you meet the criteria, there are many reasons he may have failed, he needs to address each of these but he should avoid getting bogged down in criticising the assessment report unless he 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 he has a better idea of the issues with your claim, come back to the forum and we will do our best to help.

You refer to his starting chemotherapy for a virus, if it was for cancer then it may be possible to include this in the MR as starting chemo within six months can be treated as an automatic Exemption that would qualify him for the Support Group, however, it is possible that the DWP will argue that this is out of scope as it was known at the time of the assessment.

Gordon