Client has severe pain, which inhibits her from working. Failed PCA and is appealing. Client has developed mental health problems: depression, as a consequent of her physical problems. Mental health desriptor was not raised at PCA, but she has pleanty of possible avenue's to gaining the 15 points on the physical side.

Am I correct in assuming that as the physical aspects of the client's condition have produced the depression the appeal should be only be directed towards the physical descriptor?

Has the DWP doctor justified why he hasn't done the mental health test on your client? this should be noted on the medical report.

If you client clearly has mental health problems, ie noted in the IB85 or on recent medical certificates, then the mental health test should have been done or there should at least be some reasonable justification in the medical report for not doing the mental health test.

If you are not happy with the quality of the medical report, ask that it be referred to Medical Services again for further advice. Our doctors will comment on bits of the medical report that seem to be contradicted by further medical evidence. This is something that we do at this office at the reconsideration stage if further medical evidence is provided.

Another avenue for your client is to make a new claim under the different incapacity (depression) as this was not assessed at the last PCA.

Definitely push the depression side of it as you say this was not raised at the PCA. This suggests that the medical report used to make the decision to disallow benefit may not be 'fit for purpose'

I haven't doublechecked with the article on the subject but coincidentally was reading Reg 25(3) IFW Regs today and noticed that the whole 'physical for physical and mental for mental' rules were brought in in 1997 and are probably Howker challengeable.

Even in current form just because depression may have started from coping with the physical condition it's still depression. Is she on any medication? If so and the EMP recorded it but failed to do a mental health assessment then the report is fundamentally flawed. The problem in these cases is usually where the client does not mention mental health on the IB50 and doesn't mention it at examination and the EMP doesn't pick it up and there's no medication prescribed and so on. And so the tribunal will ask why it was never mentioned.

But even then there is usually a very good answer to that question and if you can find supporting evidence either medical or just by the client on the day then the tribunal would have to find very good reasons indeed for not looking into it.

And as the job title of the previous poster shows, a good PCA decision maker would be suspicious of the report with knowledge of all this anyway. Compelling medical evidence and a request for revision could avoid a tribunal going ahead at all.