PIP awarded with no telephone assessment done, need MR but no PA4 report to use

Hi ya,
I have received my PIP award dated back in August 2023.
Having Not had a telephone assessment carried out.

After receiving my new award I had called and asked for a copy of the assessment report (PA4) as I have seen on here was what I would need to do a MR.
But I was told one was not completed as they had gone by the medical information and evidence received.

So my question is, will this be harder for me to argue against the scoring I've received?
I received Standard rate for both till 2026.

Thanks in advance x

Didn't someone else extract the notes under an SAR recently? Just a thought.

denby wrote:

Didn't someone else extract the notes under an SAR recently? Just a thought.

I did this, a couple of years ago, although in my case I didn't obtain the notes for the purpose of a potential MR.

My PIP assessment (it was a review) was done by the Case Manager at the DWP and not by an assessment provider so there was no PA5 completed. Indeed, the form was never sent to the assessment provider at all. Instead there were extensive notes from the PIP computer system that the CM had entered. The CM had looked at each descriptor and had entered notes about each descriptor, including points scored and comments. It was probably structured like a PIP5 would have been, but without an actual official form being completed.

As I had asked for copies of everything PIP held when I submitted the SAR, theese notes were part of a larger collection of printouts I received (I received 188 pages in total, with each page being numbered in the format Page xxx of 188).

It would be interesting to find out if someone used SAR to obtain just the notes relating to an assessement, if the assessment was done by the CM at the DWP rather than at the assessment provider (as I understand a PIP5 would need to be completed each time a paper based assessment is done by the latter, otherwise the CM at the DWP would have nothing to work from, to make a decision). It would be interseting to find out how the SAR was worded so that just the appropriate information needed to help with a MR was obtained.

For the printouts i received, the printouts relating to the notes completed by the CM at the DWP are all headed "Active Assessment". There are 10 pages. Following this, there is a heading "Active Determination" and "Active Submission" which contains the points scored and the length of the award plus the actual decision. The unfortunate thing is that the 10 pages weren't all together - 6 of the pages were numbered pages 28-33 of 188 pages (that i received in total) and the other 4 were numbered pages 66 to 69 (of 188). The CM had actually phoned me out of the blue to ask me a handful of questions in a call that lasted 5 minutes and had then undertaken a paper assessment based partly on this call: details of this call and my answers to her questions were on pages 157 and 158. In other words, had I wanted this for a MR it would have been a nightmare trying to pull everything together in a short period of time.

It might be that the thread starter was assessed by the assessment provider, in which case there really should be a PA5. However, if the PIP form never made it to the assessment provider and the review was wholly done by the CM at the DWP then it's more likely to be a series of notes as in my case.

I referred to a PA5 in my reply (which, as I've just submitted it, I'm unable to view). This should be a PA3, which is the form completed by the assessment provider when undertaking a paper-based assessment.