What to do

Barbara

The DWP are required to carry out a Reconsideration of your claim before it can be passed to the Tribunal Service for an appeal.

If you have additional evidence or believe they have not interpretted your existing evidence correctly, then there is an opportunity for your to present this to the DWP Decision Maker as part of this process, doing so may result in the original Decision being changed.

You are not obliged to take part in this process, but your papers will not be passed to the Tribunal Service until it has been completed.

I hope this explains it.

Gordon

Barbara

If you disagree with a DWP Decision you have two options;

You can ask for a Reconsideratiom, a new Decision Maker will look at the evidence again and any that you supply specifically for the process. They will either find in your favour or uphold the original Decision, if the latter then you can lodge an appeal, or

You can appeal, the DWP are first required to carry out a Reconsideration, if they uphold the original Decision they will pass your papers onto the Tribunal Service for a hearing to be convened.

We advise claimants to appeal rather than ask for a Reconsideration for a number of reasons.

If this is an ESA Fit for Work Decision, then a claimant will only be paid the assessment rate when they lodge an appeal, not if they only ask for a Reconsideration.

Most claimants, have already submitted all of the evidence readily available to them as part of their original submission, and therefore have little if any new evidence to present for the Reconsideration. They may be able to acquire additional evidence, but not on the timescales needed for a Reconsideration.

If you ask for a Reconsideration and then appeal, the DWP are still required to carry out a (second) Reconsideration, before passing your papers on, substantially extending the process.

With regard your documents.

When the DWP complete their Reconsideration process, they will send a packet of papers which should contain all of the documents they used to make their Decision, however, you can request these documents now, either by phoning or writing to your local DWP office, and they should supply them in a couple of weeks, this request would be seperate from the appel process.

Gordon