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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Disability benefits  →  Thread

Is there a need for representation at PIP assessments

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Brian JB
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Advisor - Wirral Welfare Rights Unit, Birkenhead

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Total Posts: 472

Joined: 18 June 2010

I am not sure what you mean by “legally qualified to award the correct descriptor ....” There is no requirement in law for a DM to be “legally qualified” and I don’t know what legal qualification you are thinking of. Appeals teams do not have qualified lawyers in their ranks and the team at Leeds that deals with appeals to the Upper Tribunal are not “qualified lawyers”, unless anyone has chosen to obtain a legal qualification in their own time. That doesn’t prevent them being entirely competent at their job. They may employ the services of a solicitor or other legally qualified person at oral hearings before the Upper Tribunal, but the staff who write submissions are not. Equally, I think we all have enough experience of legally qualified judges making decisions that are clearly wrong in law to know that a legal qualification of itself is no guarantee of a better quality outcome decision. Should we be able to put our case in person to a DM? On a practical basis, no. It would be completely inoperable as a system. Can we make written submissions to the DM for consideration with all the evidence? Yes we can, if that is how we choose to assist our clients, I can think of a lot of other types of benefit decision where that is useful as well, but there is no guarantee, as with Neil’s experience of attending a PIP assessment, that our intervention at the early stage will make a difference. We are all somewhat limited in resources.

Wensleyfoss
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Welfare Rights Advisor, Autism Anglia

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Total Posts: 61

Joined: 10 June 2015

is Steve’s easy use HP assessment guide available anywhere please?