ESA ASSESSMENT

shell wrote: My husband received phone call saying, that his ESA has stopped from today, due to health assessment they said he is capable of work. i cannot understand this his own GP recommends he finishes work because of ill health. How do I manage now without money?

I'm afraid being declared unfit for work by your GP and meeting the criteria for ESA are two separate things.

He can challenge the Decision (see below), but in the interim the only benefit available to him will be JSA or Universal Credit. For JSA, once his claim Is accepted and in payment, he can provide a new Fit Note and be excused from any Claimant Commitment for up to 13 weeks, this should get him through the MR process. The rules for UC are different and you will need to speak to a JC+ advisor.

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 you 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 he meets the criteria, there are many reasons he may have failed, he needs to address each of these but don't get bogged down in criticising the assessment report unless you 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 you have a better idea of the issues with his claim, come back to the forum and we will do our best to help.

Gordon

Shell

Deal with the issues in the report, try and stick to points that are directly linked to his scoring points but you must also check that he has shown that he meets the criteria for scoring those points in the first place. ESA has very specific criteria, often with multiple elements all of which must be met to score the points.

Gordon

shell wrote: My husbands mandatory reconsideration has not been changed, so now I have to go to tribunal can I get some advice,please I have a very stressed out husband, and it is impacting so much on his health. I do not know how we will get through this.

Revision rates at MR are very low whereas the rate at appeal is over 60%.

The ESA Appeal guide has links to the SSCS1 form that you will need to complete and the Submissions guide has a complete example that you can use to help you fill it in, you do not need to provide detailed reasons at this stage for your request.

Once your appeal is accepted the DWP will prepare their submission to the hearing and send you a copy, whilst you should wait until you receive this to finish and submit your own, you should start to prepare your own case, an increased award will only be made by your showing that you score the extra points for one, so I would start by going back through his ESA50, the assessment report and the ESA Claim guide to see how you might show this is the case.

If you have further questions then please reply to this post and we will do our best to help.

Gordon