Appeal lapsed - Some thoughts re new decision + PIP and work

Hello,

This is just a little update for everyone who kindly responded to my posts about my son's PIP appeal. I'll try to keep it as brief as I can.

Following my phone call from the PIP appeal writer ten days ago, we received the letter detailing the new decision at the weekend. To my surprise, it contained several errors and discrepancies in the summary of our conversation, which took about twenty minutes in all. Since I am happy with the outcome of the call, there is no point in complaining or even trying to correct these, but it did set me thinking.

Several of us posting on the forum have been agonising over the decisions made following assessments and worrying about how we could have done or said anything to make a difference to the outcome. We've all gone through the PA4 assessment report with a finetooth comb and written our Mandatory Reconsideration letters and appeal submissions so carefully. We've looked at the guides on this website and checked our facts over and over again.

However, those people who receive the award they were hoping for at the outset probably often do not bother to even request the PA4 report and so would not be aware of any errors it contained. Why should they, when they received a decision with which they were happy? Nevertheless, it may be that these reports are full of errors too!

My point is this - when so many of us feel that the whole process is a lottery, I think we may well be right. It may be that so much of what we say to assessors and write in our letters is misunderstood by decision makers in a hurry - and they rely too closely on the assessor's opinion, which is often flawed - or it may be simply that some people are just lucky, and their case is looked at by a sympathetic person or, eventually, by someone with the necessary authority to overturn a bad decision.

I am happy we no longer have to proceed to a tribunal, but I still feel this process is so unfair! And, surely, so costly, having to revisit and revise decisions again and again when it would be so much easier to get it right in the first place!

Claimants are the ones made to feel at fault for all this, fraudulent even, yet I heard on the radio (BBC Radio 4) only a couple of weeks ago that the DWP spends more money trying to eradicate fraud than it loses to fraudsters. However, it is, apparently, not always hapless individual claimants they are pursuing - a lot of the fraud is organised on a large scale, with huge numbers of completely fictitious claims. Nothing to do with any of us!

For those of you who have managed to bear with me so far (not such a brief post, after all!), there was one paragraph in the letter which those of us who are vexed by the DWP's apparent bias against PIP claimants who work might find interesting.

Following the standard list of changes to report is a paragraph which states:

"Personal Independence Payment can be paid to you whether you are working or not. You do not need to tell us if you start work, or the nature of your current employment, unless the amount of help you need has changed."

I don't believe I've ever seen this in a letter before and I hope I can rely on this statement because my son's assessor used the fact that he works as a reason to assume his condition had improved, which is not the case. I know several others on the forum have been affected by this assumption, too.

I will leave you all in peace now, except to say thanks once again to everyone who has offered advice and support - I am very grateful to you all.

Best wishes,

Wendy Woo

"Personal Independence Payment can be paid to you whether you are working or not. You do not need to tell us if you start work, or the nature of your current employment, unless the amount of help you need has changed."

I don't believe I've ever seen this in a letter before and I hope I can rely on this statement because my son's assessor used the fact that he works as a reason to assume his condition had improved, which is not the case. I know several others on the forum have been affected by this assumption, too.

Thank you for the heads up Wendy - as you said, My daughter is in this boat too - it was the assessors justification for awarding my daughter zero points! Interestingly it was also a DWP Caseworkers reason for encouraging me to make the complaint about the Capita Assessor's PA4 Report, she reiterated that working was no barrier to PIP - so maybe, hopefully, the Caseworker assigned to my daughters case may be 'on the ball' - here's hoping!