Incapacity to ESA migration

Cannot work out what Lord Freud means

(see news item 21 July, 2010 - Reassessment of 1.5 million incapacity benefit claimants will be a challenge that the DWP is equipped to deliver says Lord Freud Minister for Welfare Reform responds to Lords’ questions on migration to ESA )

In particular I cannot grasp how his comments:

‘Joint work is under way across the DWP and the Tribunals Service to mitigate the impact of increasing workloads by focusing on four key areas: streamlining processes within both DWP and the Tribunals Service, including an end-to-end review of the appeals process; reducing the number of appeals by looking at the messaging we use to manage customer expectations and in particular the language in the disallowance letter; increasing capacity in the Tribunals Service through increasing administrative, judicial and medical resources; and strengthening the working relationship between DWP and the Tribunals Service. We believe that this will lead to an improved appeals service for our customers in due course.’

addresses .........“concerns that the number of of ESA appeals quadrupled between April 2009 and April 2010, with 40% of appeals being successful….”

Have I missed something?

hi derek

have amended the news story to include what Lord Freud said about the wca- might be that that was addressing the concern about 40% of appeals being successful -

Reassessment of 1.5 million incapacity benefit claimants will be a challenge that the DWP is equipped to deliver says Lord Freud

cheers ros

Thanks Ros

It lifts the veil a bit - but only a bit.

You see I’m a fairly unreconstructed yorkshireman and management babble goes somewhat over my head.

Is he actually hinting that the wca is going to be made easier and therefore a significantly lower number of ICB migration will get passed as fit for work? - It would seem a major shift of policy if they dropped the intention of getting 1 million (of the 2.5 million on ICB / IS) into work / JSA.

I especially like this bit:
“...reducing the number of appeals by looking at the messaging we use to manage customer expectations and in particular the language in the disallowance letter”

I could understand if the success rate at appeal was 10% but when it is 40% this seems grossly unfair…

Are you sure he didn’t mean to say ....massaging… instead of ....messaging?