I don't know if anyone else has run into this one.....

What appears to have happened is that my client has failed the WCA and appealed against the decision, remaining on ESA. The appeal has yet to be heard but he has had to attend interviews with the local A4E person. I thought that the interviews would not start until after the assement period and that this period continues until such time as the appeal is decided.

My client is not in any case very happy with the insistence of A4E that he must attend, as I understand it he gave them letters from his consultant and GP asking that he be excused from the interviews on health grounds but the A4E person refused to accept it and insisted he attend. He has now had five interviews and the sixth and final one is imminent.

Does anyone have an answer to this query?

We are finding the same problem, except that the contractor is "Working Links".

"...he gave them letters from his consultant and GP asking that he be excused from the interviews on health grounds but the A4E person refused to accept it and insisted he attend".

I thought those decisions were made by a DWP decision maker and not the contractor.

You are quite correct, it seems that the client may be at fault for not sending the letters to the correct place but surely there is some duty on A4E to advise him to do so as they are,in my view, people on whose advice he is 'entitled to rely'. In this particular case it did not matter, the last interview was the day after my visit so the client opted to take a pragmatic view and attend.

It seems that there is nothing specific in the ESA regs to say that a claimant shouldn't have an A4E interview while an appeal is pending, all it says in reg.54 (1) and(2) (a)(i) is that they are required to attend if they are recieving an Employment and Support Allowance and are not in the Support Group. It is debateable whether the A4E interview should be suspended as it may be that the claimant will end up in the support group after the appeal but the fact remains that somone held in the assesment phase pending appeal is undoubtedly getting ESA !

And you are right . A4e should have passed his request on to a DM or at least advised him to do so. I remember this sort of nonsense happening when Reed in Partnership were first brought in years ago.

Wouldn't the problem be that the interviews can only be deferred?

Reg 59 of the ESA regs?

I have a client in a similar situation . Whilst appealing and receiving ESA, my client kept on attending A4E appointments. She then found work of 16 hours + and decided (after calling to nonify the ESA dept) to withdraw her appeal.

Can she receive WTC (50 + element), Return to Work Credit and the Job Grant? I have advised her to claim them.

Hi,

Not an identical scenario, but similar.

I had a client who had been sanctioned because of his failure to attend an appointment with Working Links. He had serious and enduring mental ill health and I had great difficulty getting the sanction removed as the decision maker acted on the information provided by Working Links and would only remove the sanction if Working Links contacted them to say he'd started re-attending. When I mentioned the issue of exemption an the grounds of my client's health condition, the decision maker more or less washed their hands of the situation saying that they could only act based on what Working Links told them.

In the end I had to talk to a manager at Working Links to persuade them to provide the relevant form to the DWP to get the sanction lifted.

Matt Finch
Leicester City Council
Welfare Rights Service

A Quote from A4E's website:

"Don’t worry - at A4e we’re here to help you with all of this and more. We’ll provide a friendly and supportive ear, and we’ll help you for as long as it takes you to get back on your feet. What’s more, we won’t charge you a penny".

Their definition of helping a person is quite clearly influenced by the money they receive from Government, the indication that they are willing to listen (supportive ear) is quite clearly a misguided and little understood sales tool, with regard to genuine support and as for the rest of the rubbish in the above quote, it only goes to support the fact that there advisers require further training in relation to a persons health condition and the possibility that enforcing attendance at interview could potentially cause a further decline in health.