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PIP appeal advice
Our tenant’s daughter’s PIP (EDL), effective from 06/02/2017, ended on 27/03/2023 following a review. The tenant is the appointee for her daughter and did the telephone call with the Health Professional on 31/01/2023. She had put “No change” for all activities on the review form and told the Health Professional that her daughter needs lots of prompting to manage daily living activities (she has ADHD and anxiety disorder). However, in the PA4 report, for every activity the Health Professional has said this is inconsistent with the “further evidence today”, which is a UC85 dated 12/04/2021. In response to saying the UC85 is not up to date evidence, the appeal bundle says, “We would like to point out to the tribunal that the award review process was started in April 2021. This was a similar time to when Miss ******* underwent an assessment for UC and the report does not highlight any significant restrictions”.
Of course, the DWP also says “UC is assessed separately and under different criteria (UC assesses fitness to work). This factor isn’t relevant to the PIP qualifying criteria”. And yet it appears to be placing considerable weight on the UC85 report.
Under reasons for preferred evidence, it says “The Health Professional’s medical report dated 31/01/2023 is more up-to-date and specifically considers limitations related to Miss ****** ability to complete PIP activities”. How can it be up-to-date when it repeatedly refers to “evidence today” being from 12/04/2021?
The UC85 report essentially says the appellant does not need supervision or prompting. I feel I need to address this in my submission, but I’m also minded to ignore it altogether and just to focus entirely on examples of how the tenant meets the relevant descriptors. Any thoughts would be welcome, thank you.
… minded to ignore it altogether and just to focus entirely on examples of how the tenant meets the relevant descriptors. Any thoughts would be welcome, thank you.
This really.
There was a time it was worth addressing DWP subs head on in every instance but often times nowadays you can just ignore what is clearly errant nonsense more often than not.
The more interesting aspect of this for me is the “no change” element.
Many WR advisers believe this suffices. I do not. I believe it opens up a bizarre rabbit hole whereby the DWP, again more often than not, look at such responses and think to themselves “ah yes, but you’ve provided no evidence of there being no change so let’s go see what we have.” This is where UC reports and such like suddenly come into play and new referrals to HCPs. It’s a dangerous game to just go with “no change”.
FWIW I tend to encourage mine to be accompanied by a copy of the original claim pack where that was high quality and succeeded first time. A claim pack; rubbish HCP report and subsequent ripping apart by a tribunal can also do the trick. Even a “no change” with a couple of new anecdotal examples per activity can do the trick.
Just “no change”? Eek.