People needlessly referred for a WCA

I’m wondering how common this is.

Chap failed WCA 6 months ago, turns out he’s got nasty cancer that took a while to diagnose; an “I told you I was ill” moment!

I go back to UC saying “I’ve got evidence that you can treat this chap as LCWRA and after a lot of toing and froing, rather than saying “thanks for that letter, here have some more money” they’ve referred him for a WCA.

They’ve got enough evidence to accept that sched 9 para 3 applies immediately. The previous WCA is irrelevant now and subject to dispute as well.

Is it just me?

Edit. Who do I know at Macmillan?

It’s not just you.

I think it’s the “...enough evidence to accept that…” statement that is at issue. DWP has plenty of evidence to make decisions in lots of cases, and still they repeatedly fail to do so, even where they don’t have any legal basis. Sadly in the cancer cases they do have the last line of “and the Secretary of State is satisfied that the claimant should be treated as having limited capability for work and work-related activity” they can rely on if they want to be difficult.

It’s as if if you give them any kind of discretion, that just defaults to the worst possible option. We’ve determined you don’t have LCW, so we’re now gonna ignore all of your health issues and see how fast we can make you run in the hamster wheel, etc.

Apparently there’s been a policy change and DMs have been told to refer everyone to CHDA…

Hi Dan,

I have a client currently who is undergoing cancer treatment, post op. She made a claim for NS ESA in June 2023, started to be paid assessment rate in July 2023. She was sent an ESA50 in September which we completed & she’s still not received a decision or advised further as to whether she’ll need to attend a medical. I thought that given the regs and her health conditions, LCWRA would be satisfied and she would have received a decision by now (and the extra money).

With ‘treated as’ LCWRA cases where someone is having cancer treatment, it’s normal for them to still trigger the WCA process, ie refer to CHDA who issue an ESA50/UC50. The back page is completed by the Cancer Nurse or other health professional, and the form returned for review by CHDA assessors. Vast majority of time they accept what written but do sometimes contact nurses by phone for further info. V occasionally CHDA assessor not satisfied they meet the criteria but in tiny number of cases. So it never gets as far as an actual assessment considering descriptors because ‘treated as’ is different to ‘assessed as’ but it very much follows the path of WCA. But usually pretty quickly and smoothly.

Happy to be corrected by any front line macmillan advisers.

Maybe the logical implications are simply that:

1. Client reports health issues in the appropriate way and submits fit note (and might report at this stage that they should fall into one of the ‘treated as’ provisions).
2. WCA process starts by 28d (and I think we do want this part to be as automatic as possible, lest we keep having this missed by humans)
3. Case goes to CHDA and UC50 issued.
4. UC50 filled/returned, inc with p. 24 filled etc.
5. Called for assessment, and so on.

In between steps 1 and 5 there’s scope for a human to look closer at the case and determine that a ‘treated as’ provision should apply, but given staff shortages and lack of training I suspect they just don’t have capacity to do this with any kind of reliability.

Va1der - 21 November 2023 10:56 AM

Sadly in the cancer cases they do have the last line of “and the Secretary of State is satisfied that the claimant should be treated as having limited capability for work and work-related activity” they can rely on if they want to be difficult.

I seem to remember that in one of the sanctions/workfare cases, there was a ruling on a similar provision that where the SoS is given an enabling power to prescribe something in regulations, he must prescribe objective circumstances that someone can look at and see if they meet. The 2012 Act powers might be a bit wider than the 2007 one but I still think the principle may apply.