Esa appeal

D

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You say his appeal is due in by Thursday, have you requested and received a Decision on a Mandatory Reconsideration?

If he is in the WRAG then there should be no reason for him to move to JSA.

The first stage to challenging a Decision is for you 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 deals with his ESA 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

You should contact the DWP for a copy of the assessment report if you have not already done so, I would phone them but again follow up the request in writing. Once you have the assessment report you 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.

Your primary task is to show that he meets the criteria, there are many reasons he may have failed, you need 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 he walked 50m, he did but they have failed to document that he 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 your claim, come back to the forum and we will do our best to help.

Gordon

D

OK so you are at the appeal stage.

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 (when you receive a full copy) and the ESA Claim guides to see how you might show this is the case.

Gordon