why does DWP call a client who has submitted a PIP appeal?

Hi my client just called to say she has received a phone call from DWP about her PIP appeal. The caller was very vague about the purpose of the call and was asking about her medical conditions. My client asked the caller to call back later. What is the purpose of this call? My client was awarded 0 points and the same after MR.

It seems increasingly common that when it comes to preparing the tribunal papers that the DWP decide to lapse the appeal (change the decision in favor of the claimant).  So they might have phoned because if they could just clarify something about the medication then they would be prepared to change the decision.  So it might be a good thing that they have been phoned!

Public Law Project (PLP) are working with Law for Life and a couple of other charities on the DWP’s ‘offers to settle’ or ‘lapsing’ practice. Claimants are made time sensitive offers if they agree to withdraw their appeals. Troublingly, the right to MR/appeal the new ‘offer’ is not always understood.

Please get in touch with Hannah Moxsom .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if anyone wants to speak to us about their experience, particularly if they received such an offer/telephone call in the last few weeks.

Questioned on whether policy guidance exists on pre-appeal ‘offer’ calls, DWP Minister Justin Tomlinson said yesterday -

A copy of the guidance will be placed in the library. It includes a step by step approach that must be taken to ensure that claimants fully understand the nature of the call and their rights; it also enables any representative to play a full part in the discussions and the decision to be made.

During the call claimants are told that should the decision be revised and the appeal lapsed, they will have a new right of appeal against the new decision. The decision notification itself includes, as it must in law, details of those appeal rights.

Good luck finding a batch of cases where that second paragraph is an accurate summation of what took place. I’ve no recent examples on this but the nature of the conversations as described by appellants suggests they are overwhelmingly coercive and appeal rights are almost never mentioned.

An equal frustration for me is that there is very much an appearance of game playing. I have never come across an offer which managed to combine the correct level of award with the correct level of award length even when it was patently obvious. They will offer one or the other but not both. At best that’s somewhere between incompetent or willful. I have a less polite version of what I actually think that is. Have never had a single case where an offer was accepted and the subsequent appeal produced less than I predicted or the same as the DWP predicted.

I had an interesting case last year (I think I might have mentioned it in a previous thread).

Claimant was seeking a daily living award having already previously secured an award of SR mobility.  The decision was that his existing award should be removed.  We requested a mandatory reconsideration and a couple of weeks later I received a phone call from the decision maker tasked with looking at the case who had been unable to contact the claimant.  We had a discussion about the claimant and his MR request and the DM advised me that he was minded to award ER mobility.

I explained that the claimant had been seeking a daily living award and we had a further discussion about the claimant’s health conditions and how he;d reported that these affect him.  When the decision came through the award was ER mobility and SR daily living.

I always see it as a positive thing if the DWP tries to phone a claimant about a mandatory reconsideration and I advise claimants that it’s almost certainly to their benefit to take the call.  (I also stress that even if the decision they’re given isn’t what want that it can then be challenged.)

Mostly I think it’s likely to be of some benefit because who wants to spend their working day advising claimants that their mandatory reconsideration has been unsuccessful when you can just notify them by letter and not have to listen to any fallout?