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Successful ESA appeals
Does anyone know on average how long it takes for the DWP to contact a client following a successful ESA tribunal.
Does anyone know on average how long it takes for the DWP to contact a client following a successful ESA tribunal.
How long is a piece of elastic?
It can depend on many factors (from many years experience) the most common include:
how do HMCTS send the decsion to the DWP (usually be email but it depends on venue)
DWP frequently claim not to have received the decision from HMCTS (however sent)
How long DWP appeals section take to record the decision on their system and then pass to the ESA assessment team to action (assessment team often claim not to have received it from appeal who say they sent it on X date etc etc)
whether the claimant claimed JSA pending their appeal and have now requested that their ESA claim is re-instated
whether jobcentre staff give wrong or incomplete information about re-instating the ESA claim (rather than making a new claim for ESA or some other such wrong advice)
whether there is an issue about missing medical certificates
and many other case specific issues!
I usually advise clients that they can expect to wait about 6 weeks for their backdate to be paid but with the proviso that actual times could vary
In my experience - several weeks, and sometimes not without further prompting. However to try prevent unnecessary delay I, on the appellants behalf, send a copy of the tribunals decision notice by email to an agreed ESA email address. This is followed up with a phone call through an agreed escalation route which was set up for advisors to call when dealing with vulnerable clients. This typically, in my experience at least, expedites the process. If these routes are not available it might be worth contacting the relevant ESA office with a view to setting something up.