Birmingham Blues - where have all the panel members gone?

For the second time in less than a month the same Birmingham DLA appeal I’m repping has had to be postponed. Nothing remarkable there, except the reason was the same each time: not enough panel members to proceed.

I phoned this morning to find out what is going on and a TS team leader confirmed that appeals have also had to be postponed and sessions cancelled in the last couple of days for the same reason in: Coventry, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Walsall as well as Birmingham.

Two reasons were given: First, experienced panel members retiring but then not being replaced quickly enough as many of the new panel members (not just disability, but also judges and medical members) are still in the process of being trained up. Second, the sheer number of appeals still in the system in the West Midlands area are stretching existing panel resources so there is little or no ability to respond if one panel member is unavailable. On the latter point, I think this could be a sign of things to come in other areas too when the expected huge number of PIP appeals starts to kick in.

The cost of these session cancellations must be huge. The stress and inconvenience of delays to appellants is no fun, either. My client has used up two days’ annual leave (so far) for her child’s DLA appeal that she wouldn’t otherwise have taken.

For the second appeal listing, TS did say they tried up to the last minute to recruit panel members from outside areas but it wasn’t possible. They promise the next appeal listing for my client will ‘definitely’ go ahead. But they told us that last time…

Paul

We are having problems with significant delay listing cases (we are within Birmingham ASC area) although not an increase in cancellations due to missing members recently. It appears to have been the practice (still is?) that cases were allocated to a specific date by the listings clerk and then they seek panel members to do the session (in otherwords tribunal dates are set for different types of hearings - single, two or three member, before they have checked if they actually have enough panel member to actually run the session!). It is worth making a complaint about this problem.

Our local venue normally has two rooms which were both being used every day. For some months this reduced to one room a day (we could never get a clear explanation of why!). It is now taking about 12 month from appeal to hearing due to the combined delay at DWP and then TS.

TS delayed a recruitment drive for new judges and disability panel members last year but we understand this has now taken place(?). 

But of course there will be a significant reduction in appeals under mandatory revision because DWP will always get it right the 2nd time around on revision!

In the Liverpool region we are having the same problem
They (HMC&TS;) have cancelled 3 sessions in the past 10 days both for ESA and DLA

We have the same problem in Derby, Chesterfield and Nottingham.  I have been told it’s because they list the appeals and write out to appealants before confirming the panel members.

North West seems to have some selective listing of tribunals without medical members so may be addressing this issue. Not sure how widespread this is but I can see many advantages to going ahead without a medical member :)