Queries on Individual Claims.

and again

Despite moderators posting on numerous occasions that we cannot answer posts asking for personal advice, some members continue to do so.

Can I please remind those members of the instructions given to us by the site owner, Steve Donnison.


Why can’t you answer a question about my specific claim?

As Moderators our area of expertise is in relation to disability living allowance, attendance allowance, the personal capability assessment used in connection with incapacity benefits and the work capability assessment used in connection with employment and support allowance. So those are the only subjects on which we can provide reliable information.

Unfortunately, you also need to bear in mind that boards like this can never provide advice to individual claimants about their specific circumstances, all we can offer is general information about how the system works.

This is because there are huge range of factors which could affect your eligibility and it’s not possible or advisable for you to disclose that information on a public forum or for us to ask you the kind of questions that would be required.

We understand that this can be frustrating and that it’s sometimes a question of judgement about the degree to which a question is specific to your claim or more general in nature. But, for our sake and your own it is important that we do our best to stick to giving information rather than advice.

So, for advice about a specific advice you need to contact an advice agency if at all possible.

Why hasn’t my post appeared?

All posts have to be checked by a moderator before they are published. This may take some time depending on the availability of our volunteer moderators and how many posts are in the queue.

In addition, please be aware that this board is provided as a courtesy, it's not covered by your subscription fee and there may be occasions when you have to wait a long time for a reply to your query.

Why have you deleted my post?

Our moderators have two main responsibilities: to protect the site from legal action and to ensure that the forums are calm, friendly places in which the vast majority of our members will feel safe to post. Our moderators often work under considerable pressure, dealing with literally hundreds of posts a day in a highly professional manner, even though they are all volunteers with long-term health conditions.

We feel very proud and fortunate to have such a dedicated and effective team of moderators. But we also accept that moderation decisions will always be subjective and will never be totally consistent as long as they are made by different individuals. As a result, you may not always agree with specific decisions, but we hope you will accept them with good grace and understand that they are made in good faith and with the best interests of the site and its members always in mind.

Some examples of posts we don’t publish are:

Posts which discuss moderators, moderation decisions, the running of the site or the behaviour of other members. If you are unhappy with any aspect of the site please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will respond to your complaint.

Posts which are not directly relevant to inacapacity or disability benefits claimants - for example, posts relating to migrant workers.

Posts which are likely to cause widespread anger, annoyance or distress or which may threaten the site's continued existence by, for example, leaving us open to legal action.
Posts which attack particular groups of claimants, such as people with addiction problems or lone parents.

Excessively long or frequent posts.

Post which accuse a doctor or anyone else of lying, malpractice or something similar – you may be certain that is what they have done, but both you and Benefits and Work could be sued for this and unfortunately being certain something is the case is not the same as being able to prove it in court.

Posts which name a doctor or DWP official or give sufficient information for them to be identified. This could be a breach of confidentiality or could be linked to proving defamation, depending on what you say about them.

Posts in which the poster threatens to harm themselves – we are a benefits information site and we aren’t in a position to offer the kind of emotional support such posters may require.
Posts which inappropriately disclose confidential information about the poster or about someone else.

Posts which breach another individual or organisation’s copyright. It’s fine to quote extracts from newspaper articles, for example, and then give a link to the full article, but it’s not OK to reproduce the whole article.

Posts relating to Nazi Germany (See the last post in this thread for an explanation).
Posts from researchers, journalists or anyone else wanting members to contact them - please email us with your request.

Posts which cause unreasonable difficulties for people using screenreaders. This includes posts which use 'text speak' and posts all in capitals'

Posts which could bring the site into disrepute. This includes posts in which people ask how to word the answer to a specific question on a claim form and posts which seek to help others by quoting the answers they gave on a claim form which led to an award.

If a post is deleted there it will normally be replaced by a notice stating that the post has been deleted and a link to this FAQ. However, if the forum is very busy, we are short of moderators or it is clear that the poster knew their post would not be published then no such notice will appear.

Finally, we would like to make it clear that in general it is very rare for a post to be deleted - it happens to fewer than one in 400 posts. If it happens to you we do hope that you understand that in order to protect both the site and our members it is sometimes necessary to delete posts and that you won’t be offended.

Moved to top by moderator.

MOVED TO TOP AGAIN.