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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Work capability issues and ESA  →  Thread

ESA APPEALS ADMINISTRATION JCP

Colin Hannon - Welfare Benefits Adviser
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Joined: 23 June 2010

Over the last few months i have had several appeals which JCP have claimed to have not have not been received ?  the Benefit delivery centre is birkenhead which handle all the ESA appeals for my area of work St Helens , I hear on the grape vine that there is a growing backlog of appeals and a reduction of staff to compound the problem , as you well know no payment can be made to the appelant until their appeal has been acccepted and logged on the system , i have cases who are now into there 12th week without a payment and each time i ring up thats if i can get through i am given the same spiel , nothing logged yet try in a few days , i have on some cases repeatedly faxed over the original appeal letter and even this is not recieved when asked to speak to a manger i got a team supervisor who basically repeated what is said by the staff on the 0845 608 8503 number but in a more courteous way , what is going on ? when you ask to speak to a decision maker its we will send them an email for a 3 hour call back ? more like a 48 hour call back thats if your lucky and if they do actually ring back they will ring back when your out on visits despite giving them a window to ring you when you know you will be availble , they never leave a direct number to ring them back on so you have to ring the helpline again which is a virtual system lacking detail therefore you have to explain the whole scenario again which has you pulling your hair out , the amount of time spent doing this is having a major impact on my working day producing nothing ,

Has anyone else had the same experince has me who are in the merseyside area i would love to know and how they negate such problems .

God help was universal credit is introduced ?

Kevin D
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Independent HB/CTB administrator, consultant & trainer (Essex)

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Joined: 16 June 2010

This post contains a partial copy & paste from another thread.

Apart from the obvious route of making a formal complaint, there is another option.

If the DWP isn’t responding to appeals, despite repeated requests, it may be possible to go directly to HMCTS.  Rule 24(1)(c) of Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Social Entitlement Chamber) Rules 2008 places the “decision maker” (i.e. the DWP in this instance) under a MANDATORY duty to issue a response to the Tribunal “as soon as reasonably practicable”.  The fact the appeal has been mislaid / lost / not registered on an intenal system doesn’t negate the DWP’s duty.

I would go back to the DWP once more, pointing out it is under a legal duty to issue such a response “as soon as reasonably practical”.  In support of this, it may be worth citing CH/3497/2005 (paras 3-6) in which the then Deputy Social Security Cmmr Mark positively supported the Local Government Ombudsman’s view that appeals should be referred to HMCTS withing 28 days.  Although this relates to an appeal made to a LA, I can’t see any (good) reason why this shouldn’t be just as relevant for appeals administered by the DWP.

If, yet again, the DWP is unhelpful you could write directly to HMCTS explaining the situation and asking the Tribunal to issue a Direction (under rule 6) requiring the DWP to comply with its duty under rule 24.  In support, you could cite R(H) 1/07 (para 34) in which it was found that an appeal could bypass the decision making body where that body failed to administer an appeal appropriately.  Although the current Tribunal system has since been introduced, my view is that the principles held in R(H) 1/07 still hold good

One option for future appeals is of course to send them by way of recorded delivery.  Relatively expensive, yes, but at least the DWP won’t be able to sustain an argument that an appeal hasn’t been made.

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