Is it worth appealing a PIP decision?

Hello teyemanon and welcome to the site and forums.

You might wish to have a look here to help navigate yourself around the place.

Welcome to Benefits and Work

As for your question, unfortunately we are not able to give advice about individual cases. Really only you can decide, perhaps with the assistance of a local benefits advisor.

Just to get all technical on you, at this stage you do not appeal, you ask for a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR), which is basically saying to the DWP you think they got it wrong, and someone else there will take a look at it. People do have success at that stage, but the success rate is quite low. It is however the next step if you want to challenge the decision. If you are not happy with outcome of the MR then you can take it to Appeal.

There is a risk to challenging the decision, in that they look at your whole application again, and could actually lower your award rather than increase it or leave it the same. That does not often happen, but it could.

Before you do anything, you can, and should, ask the DWP for the assessment report, or PA4. There is no risk to doing that, and it will tell you why the assessor recommended the decision they did.

I fear that all may have confused you even more, but if you go to this link and scroll down you will find all sorts of useful information under the heading 'PIP appeals'.

PIP resources

Do come back to us if we can help further,

Catherine

Hi Teyemanon

As well as getting hold of the assessment report PA4, you might also want to ask for your copy of the assessment recording - so you know what exactly you and the assessor said. The government says "Personal Independence Payment (PIP) can help you with some of the extra costs if you have a long term ill-health or disability." If you have seizures there is obviously a safety and reliability issue. You are not the only claimant who uses their money for cleaning help.

You have one month from the date on your decision letter to put in for a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR). The details you need are in the PIP Guide to PIP Appeals (that also includes MRs). You can find it from the link in Catherine's post. Scroll about halfway down page.

BIS