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Implementation of award following successful appeal
Does anyone have any information regarding the time scales in implementing revised benefit rates & paying arrears following a successful appeal please?
Also any views on whether there is any merit in asking for a compensation ( one off ) payment from DWP where there is a successful outcome at UT, which has taken almost 2 years to procure, from the initial PIP decision.
1. Depends on the benefit and circumstances. Generally 4-6 weeks. Longer if the DWP want to appeal.
2. I think it is the same as in this thread: https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/14290/
DWP very likely to say they won’t compensate (“our decision was reasonable and nothing went wrong even though the Tribunal disagreed with us”) but the only way to be sure you won’t get compensation is not to ask.
I also normally advise clients that it will take DWP 4 - 6 weeks, however pleasantly surprised this week that after successful appeal hearing on 20/9/19 decision letter dated 1/4/19 has been issued by DWP. In addition ESA had also been in contact with client to reinstate her SDP!!
No harm in asking for compensation.
The PIP award for this client has still not been paid. The Upper Tribunal’s final decision was in February & a letter was sent to PIP a month ago…..but still nothing! Any thoughts please?
Contact CPAG’s judicial review project to see if they can help draft a pre-action letter - can’t see a template for it at the moment but they may well be able to help draft one
The PIP award for this client has still not been paid. The Upper Tribunal’s final decision was in February & a letter was sent to PIP a month ago…..but still nothing! Any thoughts please?
Have you phoned PIP to ask what is causing the delay?
It is unusual for the UT to make a final decision in a PIP case (rather than refer back to a FTT if claimants appeal is allowed on the point of law). UT decision would have been sent to DWP legal (in Leeds? - as they would deal with a UT case rather than a PIP appeal writer) rather than to PIP as with FTT decisions - its possible PIP have not been sent the decision by DWP legal yet
Have you sent PIP a copy of the UT decision? Like Dan suggests phone PIP and ask about the delay and if PIP already have the decision consider notice before action as Daphne suggests.
Many thanks for the comments. Yes, I have sent a copy of the notice to PIP but think we will now need to call them.
You need to bear in mind that this system is broken.
Your appeal is likely being dealt with by snail mail; a process that relies on a person behind the Wolverhampton Post Handling Site addresses recognising an obscure bit of post and bringing it to the attention of a particular team.
In the last 2 days I’ve seen 4 separate occasions where I’ve sent in recon requests and they’ve not been actioned by the post handling site. I’ve called and the call handlers have made the respective teams aware they need to do something.
With this in mind we can’t sit on our laurels waiting for things to happen; we need to be proactive. So many little admin errors such as I describe slow these things down. It was Elliot who mentioned Sagan’s razor and in looking that up I stumbled across Hanlon’s razor; never explain by malice something that can be explained by incompetence… They are incompetent. We can’t trust them to do their job properly.
Dan is probably correct that the decision of the UT is being dealt with by snail mail (or poss. email?). The UT would issue the decision direct to DWP DMA Leeds by post. Whether DMA Leeds then forward it to the appropriate processing office by post (via Wolverhampton) or email I don’t know.
FTT decisions are now sent by email by the tribunal venue clerk to the DWP (to a central point) who are then responsible for sending it to the appropriate processing centre (presumably also by email). That’s because appeal submissions are not routinely produced at the processing office responsible for the specific benefit / claimant’s geographic location. As far as I am aware HMCTS no longer sent a hard copy of the FTT decision to DWP by post.
When the PIP/ ESA etc processing office say they haven’t received the decision from a FTT what they really mean is DWP central have not sent it on to the appropriate processing office (or they have but the processing office doesn’t know in which ‘work box’ to locate it / it’s there but it hasn’t been actioned). To be fair to HMCTS its very raarely their failure to issue a copy to DWP.
The issue is trying to locate in which stage of the process DWP’s incompetence arises!
In respect of MRs what we experience is that the MR’s has been dealt with by Wolverhampton and scanned to the processing office ‘work box’ but as it is not a specific DWP form it just goes into a general box and will sit there for weeks until it gets ‘to the top of the pile’ to be dealt with (or until we phone to chase). That’s not to says some don’t go ‘missing’ at mail handling.