Hi,

I have noted of late that TAS Sutton seems to have gone backwards in terms of customer services. I understand that they have taken on a lot more work i.e. Fox Court cases.

Is anyone else having the same issues such as waiting over four weeks for appeals to be listed when it used to be always two weeks?

2 weeks? 4 weeks? I am extremely envious... . 8-12 weeks (typically) in my current neck of the woods (Glasgow TTS office). And, Glasgow don't consider they have any major problems (at least not compared with one or two others!).

Pantomime season it may be, but of course four weeks is clearly a typo - and two weeks would be pure fairy queen/disneyland stuff.

We have just had a flurry of letters from Birmingham informing us that they will not be contacting us again until at least February/March with a view to setting dates for hearings.......they say this is due to an increase in appeals being lodged .....we suspect that a large percentage of these are ESA related....

most of our appeals are taking weeks and weeks to be listed due to the level of esa appeals.

today though i received a letter helpfully had an ib appeal listed for the 6th of january. very good given i will be off for two weeks over x mas. how do these people expect us to meet clients before tribunals etc when they do things like this?

Six months in our area (part of Birmingham region)

Blimey 6 months. I think I'll keep quiet from now on. Shame they seem to slipping back a bit though.

Wed 23-Dec-09 11:25 AM by Dan_manville

Sutton's dealt with by Birmingham ASC as well which; since they moved premises & remodelled their working practices on the Durham Toyota model of working has gone to hell in a handbasket.

They've moved desks/direct numbers more times than I can count, frequently lose files, in fact a couple of weeks ago I was chatting to a Tribunal member who was lamenting the fact that none of the appellants on the session had been notified of their hearings.

Do bear in mind that an edict has been handed down to the listing teams that all "old" cases, i.e older than 17 weeks from the date of the enquiry form, should be listed by the end of the financial year. Shame they've not got enough sessions, at least at the Brum venue, to clear them.

We are reliably informed that Senior JCP officials are having discussions on this very issue with the Tribunal Service as we type........

Our predicament is compounded, and made worse even, by the fact that we only have one venue in Kings Lynn which is only open one day a week. Our other venues are either in Norwich (98 miles round journey)
Peterborough ( 76 miles round journey) or Cambridge which is a 96 mile round journey.

If our corrospondence to believed, then the next hearing dates we can look forward to will be in March or April ....

Just to add to all this fun and frivolity, Nottingham has now closed and we are told that the work has been transferred to Birmingham TS for all administrative issues.

I know this is not ground breaking news, but i would have thought professional etiquette would suggest that all the current appellants and in fact Welfare Rights Advisers/Caseworkers etc etc, be formally notified of the point of closure, so to avoid sending further paperwork to a point, where it may or in fact may not be received - who knows ?