Assessors reports for PIP

It is well worth asking for the assessors report if you are turned down for PIP. Just before lockdown, I attended a face to face appointment to support my son who has mental health problems. After sitting in an empty waiting room for nearly 2 hours he was finally called in. The assessment was horrendous! Firstly she told my son that if he didn’t sit upright and have eye contact with her then she would cancel the assessment “and you will get nothing” .. I stopped the interview at that time in support of my son and told her in no uncertain terms about the long wait, the phone call my son got that morning changing the time of the meeting which caused him to be more anxious etc etc. She replied by saying that it was our fault as we had provided too much evidence and she had to read it all! The meeting went from bad to worse and I had to cut in several times to try and calm the situation. She told me and my son she was a specialised mental health nurse and knew what mental health was all about! She even diagnosed my son with PTSD during the interview?? When my son received his PIP award, he scored 0 for everything! I wrote on his behalf and asked for a copy of the assessors report. When it arrived, her title was auxiliary nurse, the box where is says what evidence was considered was left blank by the assessor, her view of the assessment was that my son had good eye contact, she had a good rapport with my son and basically there was nothing wrong with him. The rest of the report was a cut and paste job! If it didn’t have my sons name on the top I would have thought that he had received the wrong assessment report and that it was someone else’s interview. I of course asked for a mandatory review and went to town citing the assessors report. We heard nothing for a for a few months and suddenly he noticed a large amount of money put in his bank account from DWP. No letters had arrived? I rang them and they told me that his PIP had been reinstated in full and backdated to the date it was cancelled? Then out of the blue, the letter arrived telling him what he qualified for, exactly the same as before, as if the nightmare had never happened!

So please make sure when you are appealing to ask for the assessors report first! Well worth helping in any mandatory reconsideration! Good luck!

Hi Lyndsey,

Very interesting reading your account of your son's assessment.

The same thing happened to me 2 years ago, zero points and lots of mistruths and misinterpretating. I requested a MR and complained furiously with very strongly worded accusations that the 'nurse' who assessed me wasn't qualified to judge or comment on my mental health problems and how they affected me.

It worked. My award was reinstated. What a waste of everyone's time and all the money the assessment and MR must have cost.

I am still smarting after all this time, in fact it'smade my health issues worse and I wish I could do something more to let the authorities know.

Phrank.

so do you suggest that when doing the MR you pull the report to bits or wait until appeal? The only reason I ask is that my daughter has experienced the exact spa thing with her assessor and report. It is full of lies and untruths and I want to go to MR but I really don't know how. Any advice would be gratefully received. I am pleased you managed to sort this out for your son though.

I have had the exact same thing happen to my sister and i too was wondering if i should complain about the mistakes & lies in the report & whether i should address each point which was incorrect. After reading this I'm going to go through the report bit by bit. I'm also trying to get a leter or report from my gp as she knows my struggle & what I've been coping with & what i can & can't do. If they'd have contacted any of the people I'd listed they'd have come to a different outcome but no, they have to write lies & waste our time, their own time & tax payers money when for less than a £1 they would have known everything. What a waste. With reading your story it's also helped me as the situation is quite similar sho thank you for your help.