PIP and my Dr's comment

purity

The first thing is that you must ensure that you PIP form is with the DWP by the required date, whatever happens with your Dr's letter, you can always send the letter separately, but if your form is late you run the risk of having your PIP claim closed.

Re the letter, I am afraid this is down to your psychiatrist, they can write directly to the Assessment Provider for your claim with more detailed information, they can mark this as confidential.

They can wait for the AP to write to them for more information, at this time we have no statistics as to how often AP's write to a claimants doctors in regard to PIP, it is certainly not done for every claim, but whether it is a majority of not we can't say. For ESA the figure is only 25%.

A general letter of support may help but will not be as much help as one that directly addresses the PIP Descriptors and your ability to undertake the activities.

You can include your doctors comments on the PIP form, this may increase the chances of the AP contacting them.

Gordon

Purity

Whilst the DWP include delivery time for letters that they or their agents (Capita and ATOS) send out, they do not seem to extend the facility to claimants, so we recommend that members take suitable steps to ensure that their forms, etc. are with the DWP by the required date. If your form needs to be with the DWP by 3 October and you do not intend to post until the 2nd, then I would recommend that you send it Next Day Delivery although this can be quite expensive, if you can post earlier then you could use Recorded Delivery, or whatever it is now called.

Re the diary.

You should certainly include the day of the week, I would include the date to show that it is relevant to your claim, as to how long, a minimum of two weeks but if you can a month, some Descriptors (for example handling your finances) would benefit from a longer period.

Obviously if you can't send it with the form then send it when you can.

Gordon

Purity

Diaries are of most value when there is some variability in the claimants condition or they are trying to highlight the longer term effects of a particular activity that they might have to undertake on a regular basis, for example visiting their GP and how they are affected on the days after.

There is always a balance between providing too much information (in terms of word or page count) and not providing enough, I used to write technical documents and my first draft was always twice as long as the final one and yet still provided the same level of detail. This is your claim and only you will benefit or suffer from the Decision, so if you feel that including a diary will increase the understanding that the assessor and Decision Maker will have of your limitations then you should consider its inclusion whatever the CAB might say.

Gordon