IB-IS loss of benefit for not attending medical

pauline edna wrote: can any one please give me some help as i have got my tribunarl on the 12/2/14 ,and i have not got a clue were to start. i am late getting to this as i also had to fill in another claim form for esa and that has taken me nearly 3 weeks that has gone of today.so now were do i start i have looked at my appeal papers and on there some of the information is in correct as they have not taken all my info and used it .

Sorry we missed your post from this afternoons session.

As I understand your appeal is in relation to your ESA claim being closed as a result of your failing to attend the assessment.

With only a week to the hearing you are going to be limited in what you can do as it is probably too late for you to send a detailed submission to the Tribunal Service and get it forwarded to all parties before the actual hearing, so you should concentrate on providing something that you can hand in on the day, this will limit you to a page of text.

On this page you need to explain why you failed to attend either appointment.

Basically you need to show Good Cause why you did not attend the appointment that resulted in your ESA claim being stopped. I note that this was a second appointment. You do not explain who cancelled or refused the first one, although you mention that "64 stairs" were involved, if ATOS cancelled for Health and Safety reasons then you can argue that you have in fact only had one appointment and the closure of your claim was pre-emptive. If you refused then it will be more difficult but you could still use the H&S suggestion and see what happened.

In regard to the second appointment, your problem is that you were not prevented from attending, but rather chose not to, ignorance of the law is not usually a defence but if you were advised by your GP and Neurologist to wait for further reports then this may be some defence.

To be honest, it will much depend on the Tribunal Panel on the day and how sympathetic they are to your situation.

Gordon

pauline edna wrote: the first appointment i never recived the second i missed as was up 64 steps which i cannot cope with ,and i have a phobia to lifts . my GPs letter which i obtained confirming this was sent of and they accepted this . 3 rd appointment arrived i then rang atos saying that i was recomended by GP and nurologist to wait for all my results as if there were futher illnesss running along side my m.e, it was best to have all info to hand. i forwarded all my appointments to dwp ,they say the appointments were before the face to face which they were but i did not have results or my mri scan till december .in my appeal papers it states that these new tests were to confirm my diagnosis this was diagnosed in 2000. dwp say they have no record of telephone conversation

All you can do is explain what happened and why you did what you did, the panel will either accept your statements as Good Cause for you missing the appointments or not.

Gordon