Hi all,
My wife and I have helped my wife's sister (who has autism and a learning disability, the latter diagnosed as putting her in the bottom 1% of IQ / cognitive ability) apply for PIP. My wife attended a face to face assessment with her, which appeared to go OK. But we have just received an egregious decision letter awarding her only 4 points in the daily living category, and zero in the mobility category.
The letter is dated 29 August, but was only received on 6 September, 8 days later (significantly chewing up our time to respond). Would you make anything of this in the mandatory reconsideration application? Additionally, ahead of the assessment, we twice requested per procedure that it be audio recorded. On the day this was not set up. The assessor then did set it up on the day but subsequent to the assessment we received a letter stating that the recording had failed. Again, would you make much of this (i.e. complain and point to disenfranchisement of the claimant) in the in the mandatory reconsideration application?
It is hard to tell whether it is simple incompetence or foul play with respect to the above.
Finally, we would like in the mandatory reconsideration application to put them on notice that we are also preparing a full tribunal appeal for circumstances where her application is not reconsidered positively. Are there any drawbacks to doing this?
Many thanks in advance,
Tom
