Health Assessment Advisory Service - ESA50 marked as not received

Hi there,

Can anyone give me some advice on next steps please? It appears my ESA claim has been marked for closure as my ESA50 form was marked as not received by deadline.

ESA50 had to be returned by 17/03/23, I have proof of delivery that shows it arrived at the return address on 16/03/23 at 06:03 (Special Delivery, so signature/photograph).

I called DWP this morning as I didn't get a text acknowledging receipt to find that my ESA claim had been marked for closure. The person was somewhat helpful although advised that it could take 72 hrs to get a supervisor call back and accepted that my tracking reference did indeed show the letter arriving. She suggested that while I wait for the call back it could be useful to get in touch with HAAS to see if there was anything they could do.

I called HAAS only to find out that it doesn't matter that it was received by the deadline, they need an additional 7-10 days to put it on their system and so I should have sent it back earlier. It's not their fault that it's been closed, it's my fault for not sending it back on time. We went round in circles as I explained it was received before the deadline, and her saying well HAAS didn't process it before the deadline, so it doesn't matter when it was received. It was an absolutely useless phone call and waste of 20 minutes.

Can anyone advise what I should do in this situation please and what next steps I can take to have my claim reinstated? I've not even managed to get as far as an assessment appointment before falling foul of red tape. To my mind, a deadline is a deadline, and my form was received 24hrs before this deadline was up, so I've done nothing wrong. Why would their letter say it had to be received by 17/03/23, if really what they meant was it should be received by 07/03/23?

(If it matters, the reason I was flying close to the wire with timing/the deadline was because I had to pace myself completing the form - my condition impacts my cognition and I also wanted to include my most recent consultant report.)

Thats appalling that you were told that- the deadline is the deadline and you got it back in time! I totally agree with BIS about contacting your MP. I did this last year during a fiasco with my partner's UC50 and it sorted the issue. Hopefully you have a decent MP. Best wishes

Thanks both, really appreciate the responses and confirmation - fingers crossed I get it resolved soon.

It'll come as no surprise (I'm sure) to hear that I was never called back, I'm currently on hold to DWP to try and get this sorted out. On your advice, I've also sent an email off to my MP, unfortunately they are known to be a wee bit rubbish, however I live in hope they might actually respond.

I shall keep you updated with progress - I feel this might turn into a saga and a half!

Thought I'd give you a wee update with the saga of my missing ESA50. Short version - after submitting it four, yes four, more times by the third week in May they eventually decided to find it in whatever mystical back office it had got lost in. Not content with taking forever and a day to process my form, they then cancelled my medical assessment three times and 'forgot' to arrange for the one that did end up going ahead to be recorded. All's well that ends well though, and I finally got the brown envelope through the post today confirming I've been placed in the support group.

Slightly longer version - my local job centre manager and someone very good at DWP finally got it sorted. When my form was being scanned in the system was misreading my NI number (despite it being typed) and just not allocating the form anywhere. We discovered this when the job centre manager scanned it in, attached it to my file and then sent it to the processing team and they claimed it never arrived, despite being attached to the account and it coming directly from the job centre. It was quite the saga and took the centre manager about six weeks of sustained effort to sort out for me.

Medical appointment - it was telephone, although cancelled three times due to staff sickness - for my condition (apparently) it had to be a doctor that completed the assessment, so they had a limited pool to draw on. On the fourth occasion (where it did go ahead), they called five mins before the appointment to tell me there had been a miscommunication and they hadn't noticed my request for a recording. Joy. I wasn't happy about it going ahead, but similarly, didn't want to have to prepare myself for the assessment for a fifth time. I did however did submit a formal complaint about it and am awaiting a response.

Huge thanks for all the help/advice given - it was very helpful to know I wasn't going mad.

My advice if this ever happens to anyone else: resend the form yourself (recorded/special delivery so you can track it all the way into the building) and at the same time, make friends with your local job centre manager. Honestly, if it wasn't for him, I'm not sure it would have been sorted out yet - very odd glitch in the system but it seemed to misread one of the characters in my NI repeatedly.