Appointeeship for PIP?

Earlier this year, my appointeeship for my son's claim finally came through. A woman from the DWP had been round to check mine and my son's details and IDs and spoke to us both, advising me to put in an application for PIP as well as the UC claim already in progress. She advised me to wait a few days for it to go through on their system and then call the PIP line. That seemed easy enough so I did.

When I got through to the new claims line for PIP though, I was told that the appointeeship form still hadn't come through so they couldn't speak to me. So I waited quite some time until I got confirmation in writing and called again. This seemed to go OK, they definitely could speak to me and asked a few questions, speaking to me for about 15 minutes or so until they said that a claim form would be sent to me straight away.

Nothing arrived so I checked with them after a couple of weeks and was told that they couldn't actually send one out as the appointeeship still wasn't registered with them. (Not sure when they were going to tell me this!) I needed to check with the DWP about it. Eventually the agent said he'd do that himself, as I explained I'd already checked with the DWP. So I left it a week or so while this happened, heard nothing then decided to contact the DWP myself.

On asking the DWP, via the UC online journal, I was told that I needed to get back in touch with the PIP line. I did that today and was again told they hadn't received the confirmation. They said they'd have to do another home visit to sort out the appointeeship as they're a separate department. I asked whether I'd need different appointeeship forms for UC and PIP and they hesitated but said yes and would I like to arrange that appointment now.

Well, to me this seemed like a waste of time and resources, so I asked whether I could simply send them a copy of the appointeeship letter instead. They agreed and I'll put that in the post tomorrow.

But I'm puzzled. I'd assumed after my first calls to the PIP line that they wouldn't speak to me until they'd received the form. And then, when they did speak to me and said they could see the appointeeship on their system, I thought the PIP form would just be sent out. Can it really be that I need to liaise between DWP departments? Or present the appointeeship form each time? It seems unnecessarly time consuming and obstructive to me, especially when they' don't bother to get back to me to tell me there's an issue or explain to me from the very start that I need to send the form between departments.

Thanks David. It definitely felt as though I was being palmed off. Plus I got slightly different stories each time I called. All I wanted was a PIP claim form and it's beginning to feel as though this is being deliberately withheld.

Anyway, I sent off my letter and a copy of the appointeeship to them today and will give it a week or so then call back armed with that knowledge.