How long for ESA payment/backpayment after successful appeal?

Anyone had experience of this?  Client suffering from rent arrears and understandably wants his payments/backpayment asap after successful appeal.  Has been told by helpline that it will take ‘several weeks’..  I would be grateful for any experience people have had with this.  Thanks a lot.

Yeah. I gather the decision goes back to the Dispute Resolution Team, which considers whether to take it to the Upper Tribunal. Once it has decided this, either arrears can be issued via the relevant benefit centre, or benefit and arrears are suspended pending the response from the Upper Tribunal, which will probably be 6+ months.

Provided there is no pending action from DWP, arrears CAN be issued very quickly - typically 3 working days.

If you have escalation numbers for the benefit centre, you could try speaking to one of the staff directly and making the point that there area rent arrears and delay may lead to repossession.

I don’t know if they are still routinely doing this, but if ESA was awarded on reg 29/35 rather than the activity descriptors, then DWP might be asking for a statement of reasons, which can delay things a bit. I gather that they were doing this, not on the merits of the particular case or necessarily to apply to the UT, but as an exercise to try to understand why they kept losing on this issue at tribunal.

I wouldn’t start chasing anything until 6 weeks had passed.

Thanks for all the responses.  I am amazed it takes so long - his payments were certainly stopped a lot quicker!  I think I will have to ask for a short term benefit advance or discretionary housing payments as the client is really struggling and has been warned about eviction.