PIP MR

Hi Shelisa,
Welcome to B&W!
Firstly, well done on achieving an award of PIP, this is not easy! However, I realise that you are disappointed not to be awarded the full amount of points that you feel you should have been awarded.
You may wish to instigate an appeal. It is possible (but very rarely happens) that DWP might reopen the whole award if you do proceed to appeal.
The first stage of the process is to write into DWP, heading your letter 'Mandatory Reconsideration'. You normally have 1 month from the date on the decision letter. However, if you have received the PA4 and not yet received the actual decision, there is a small window of opportunity to phone DWP now and state what was wrong with the assessment. If the decision hasn't been made, you might persuade the decision maker to give you more points. If you phone, you may wish to confirm what you have said in a letter, but if you do write in, make it clear that you are disagreeing with the assessment report, and reserve the right later to make an MR request if need be.
DWP often come up with weird analogies/assumptions. They often assume you can drive a car so you peel a carrot and do everything else. These assumptions don't usually stand up to scrutiny, and hence you can rightfully explain why the analogy is wrong, and why contrary to DWP's opinions it is impossible for you to do the relevant tasks. Explain how you do manage to complete the PIP tasks.
I don't know if you have read our members guides, but if not, then please have a look. There is lots of information about all stages of claiming PIP.
If you are too late to complain about the assessment report because the decision has already been made. You can complain about the assessment in your MR letter.
Go through the report, rather than nit pick everything, se if you can group the errors etc into maybe 4 or 5 categories. Use bullets points.
You could say eg
the assessment is incorrect because
- cut and paste comments were used throughout
- the assessor failed to let me answer the questions
- the assessor had no obvious understanding of the severity of my mental health problems
etc etc
then provide an example of each problem.
You may also wish to have an opening paragraph or two explaining when you became ill, what happened, general problems that you have as a result.
You can then go through each descriptor and say what you should have received and why. (The members guides are useful for this!)
Remember that the law is clear - if 2 or more descriptors in any section apply equally for over 50% of days then the highest value one should be used. (regulation 7 PIP Regs 2013)
Make sure you keep a copy of the letter , and mark each page clearly with name/NI Number.
If you have more medical reports send them in, or alternatively send in the previous ones again, and refer to them saying you have resent them because they were clearly ignored previously. You may also wish to quote from them.
The members guides can be found here.
www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/guides-for-claimants/pip
I hope this helps.
LL26

Hi Lisa210

Fingers crossed, hope you get the outcome you want, remember you need to fit the criteria for each descriptor.

Follow LL26 sound advice.

Good luck.

Gary

Hi Lisa210

That really is terrific news, congratulations and well done. You can now have a well deserved rest with no stress.

I am tagging my reply so that the back office also get to read your encouraging post.

Gary

Tags: @RESULT @PIP @ APPEAL