Mr Commissioner Williams has confirmed (again) that if a Tribunal is considering making a decison laess favourable to the apellant than the decison under appeal, it should give an explicit warning so as to enable the apellant to properly consider his position.

An appellant can withdraw his appeal at any time before the Tribunal makes its decision.

In an oral hearing, the appellant will then have the opportunity of withdrawing his appeal during the hearing in order to keep the award he already has.

CDLA/1822/2008 is in the toolkit area of Rightsnet http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/DLA_1822_2008.pdf

The friendly warning to the appellant is interesting. I have seen something similar in another CD where leave to appeal was given for procedural reasons, but the Commissioner looked to be thinking that the appellant might not do as well with another Tribunal...