PIP helpline callers being asked who is assisting them to complete form

A client contacted me today to say he’d been asked to identify who’s helping him with the form. Haven’t heard of this before. Has anyone else and to what purpose?

I’ve had it with every phone call I’ve made to help someone lodge a claim for PIP.  (I always say me.)
So far there appears to be no purpose to it.

Have noticed it only in the past few weeks on a couple of cases. I’m sure someone high up somewhere has decided there’s some purpose to it but from my perspective I see it as an entirely positive thing as I’ve already seen too many original decisions, MR decisions and HCP reports which erroneously report that a claimant is perfectly capable of sequencing, reading, understanding and so on because they filled in their own claim pack when they did no such thing.

I go out of my way to explain who filled in the claim pack and why right from the off. On occasion I’ve even spelt out how many phone calls; letters; home-visits and even how many hours and so on led to that point. Certainly puts a 25 minute HCP report into perspective. My experience at tribunal (so far) has been that that kills stone dead any attempt to undermine the credibility of a claim pack because of who filled it in. I’ve had evident frustration at that expressed by at least one medical professional much to my amusement.

Equally I’m sure we’ve all come across the tribunal member(s) who asserts that a claim pack is not to be trusted precisely because it was completed by a WRO. As a subset of that there’s also the fascinating dynamic whereby a form completed by an experienced WRO will always be more likely to lack credibility in comparison to that completed by a volunteer in an independent advice centre or Citizens Advice. That’s not a criticism of anyone by the way.  I’ve managed volunteers who can do a DLA claim pack far more accurately than some experienced paid staff I’ve worked with. Merely an observation as to how mad the whole nonsense is. My instinct is that there’s more value in saying who did what than there is to not do so.

Like Helen I’ve always been asked and always give my details.

As to the point of it - myself and my colleagues often receive copies of award decisions, Mandatory Reconsideration notices and reminder notices as well as these being sent to the claimant.  Often very useful.

Although one of my colleagues (who works a lot with some particularly chaotic claimants) isn’t always happy at receiving the reminders when the person is next due to have their PIP reviewed and hasn’t returned their forms.  Usually he’s not had contact with them for a while at that point and has no idea where they are!