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Tribunal news

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Timothy Seaside
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Housing services - Arun District Council

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Tribunal hearings are to be on papers where possible. There is a triage procedure for judges to identify cases where the appellant is likely to succeed and ask the parties to agree to it going ahead on the papers.

Where a hearing in person is required, the salaried judge can make decisions about the composition of the panel. As far as possible, hearings will be done remotely, and may be done in the absence of parties.

These PDs are set to last six months but this may change.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/General-Pilot-Practice-Direction-Final-For-Publication-PDF.pdf

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/General-Panel-Composition-Pilot-Final-for-Publication-1.pdf

Peter Turville
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Further to Elliott’s post here https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/15696/ it will be interesting to see how this is now applied in practice to social security tribunals.

We have just been notified that all hearing listed this week at our local venue have been postponed (no reasons given).

Mike Hughes
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I think things have moved on rapidly. All telephone hearings surely? No other way it can proceed.

stevenmcavoy
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my hearings for this week are now scheduled to happen by phone. this isn’t ideal for my client group but its a choice between this or ask for an adjournment/postponement and kick it into some very long grass.

one client has also passed a uc wca and now I have the dilemma of asking for an adjournment to get a copy of that report or not.

JojoMitchell
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Disability Law Service, London

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Have 3 appeals still listed at Bexleyheath - 30/03/20 is my next one.  Hoping that it will be done by telephone at least.

Chrissum
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WRAMAS, Bristol City Council

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They’ve started to do phone hearings down here. initially repless whilst they set up conferencing style call arrangements.

ninja9girl
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Derbyshire County Council

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My hearing is going to be a telephone hearing but I only found out about it because they asked for my clients contact number.  I had to the client to find out what was happening.  They were just going to ring the client not me.

DWRS
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Durham County Council Welfare Rights

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We were told on Friday that all our hearing would be dealt by telephone, only problem is that not all of the venues we cover have the right equipment. This morning we have been told that all of our hearings listed for this week have now been postponed. We are up in the air about what the situation will be for the weeks to come. We have listings up to the end of April in our diary.

stevenmcavoy
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mine have been postponed as well.

Mike Hughes
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Capacity to have 5 people online at present with presumably plans to build on that. So that’s panel, clerk and appellant and explains why repped cases would then be pulled.

I’d think the only repped cases going ahead would be

- ones which require only a single judge.
- ones where we agreed to proceed with a single judge.
- ones where the client consents to go ahead without a rep.

Obviously the last one is one to watch. Entirely forseeable that the conversation between clerk and appellant may not be as we’d wish.

CHAC Adviser
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If a client doesn’t wish to have a telephone hearing do they have any recourse to request it be postponed until a face to face hearing can be held?

Mike Hughes
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CHAC Adviser - 30 March 2020 03:52 PM

If a client doesn’t wish to have a telephone hearing do they have any recourse to request it be postponed until a face to face hearing can be held?

In theory yes. In practice how do you get that request past a skeletal clerking staff in the office possibly only to sit in on a telephone hearing and thus unavailable by phone to take the call and then find a judge to pass it onto?

CHAC Adviser
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Mike Hughes - 30 March 2020 04:04 PM
CHAC Adviser - 30 March 2020 03:52 PM

If a client doesn’t wish to have a telephone hearing do they have any recourse to request it be postponed until a face to face hearing can be held?

In theory yes. In practice how do you get that request past a skeletal clerking staff in the office possibly only to sit in on a telephone hearing and thus unavailable by phone to take the call and then find a judge to pass it onto?

Well in the case we’re dealing with (we’re not representing just giving advice) the hearing is on Thursday so we’re probably well into the realm of having to ask for it on the day anyway!

DuncanLennox
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Welfare rights volunteer Rotherham CAB specialising in PIP and DLA appeals

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I am a volunteer in Rotherham specialising in PIP and DLA. MY tribunals listed in next month are all being adjourned I think.Is anyone getting any cases relisted as telephone hearings? I had one case adjourned as this was building up where DWP then reviewed case and awarded PIP.Has anyone any sense of how DWP will respond.They must know they lose most appeals and I wonder if they will be pro active in reviewing cases to avoid backlog of appeals increasing?

Mike Hughes
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DuncanLennox - 30 March 2020 05:16 PM

I am a volunteer in Rotherham specialising in PIP and DLA. MY tribunals listed in next month are all being adjourned I think.Is anyone getting any cases relisted as telephone hearings? I had one case adjourned as this was building up where DWP then reviewed case and awarded PIP.Has anyone any sense of how DWP will respond.They must know they lose most appeals and I wonder if they will be pro active in reviewing cases to avoid backlog of appeals increasing?

Same issue I think. Logically it’s what ought to happen. Practically ain’t gonna be no-one reviewing anything if they’re not in the office.

Elliot Kent
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The usual system is that cases are reviewed (1) when the appeal bundle is to be produced (2) (sometimes) when new evidence or directions arrive and (3) a few days beforehand when the PO (if there is one) gets the file.

DWP are likely going to focus, to the extent that appeals officers are working at all, on dealing with the backlog of appeals which they haven’t yet produced responses to yet. They are already months behind in some departments. I doubt they are going to use their time to spontaneously review existing cases.

Peter Turville
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We have now received the following detailed update from the RTJ. Note that it is specific to the SE region so changes may vary in other regions.

File Attachments

Martin Williams
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Welfare rights advisor - CPAG, London

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The Chamber President has now given a “Guiidance Note” for the Social Entitlement Chamber of the FTT- https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/31-Mar-20-SPT-SSCS-Composition-of-Tribunals-CP-Guidance-Note-no-3-1.pdf (I think just for SSCS appeals not the other ones the SEC deals with)

SG LB C
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Income Maximisation Team LB Camden

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Any word on getting hold of bundles? I’ve been notified that a bundle has been sent to the office. We cannot access the office or the client. I have emailed asking if bundles can be scanned and sent via secure mail (our mail is secure).

what are other people doing?

Elliot Kent
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You’re going to need to put some provision in place for your mail. I really doubt DWP are suddenly going to start emailing bundles even to secure email as they don’t have a digital existence. Even presenting officers don’t have access to the actual bundle.

Mike Hughes
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No chance of any provision for incoming post. I’ve lodged one appeal in the past week where I’ve asked for the bundle as pdfs. DWP send an electronic bundle to HMCTS as I understand it so there is capacity. Well, there is the ability. Capacity is another issue.

SG LB C
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Income Maximisation Team LB Camden

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Mike Hughes - 02 April 2020 12:15 PM

No chance of any provision for incoming post. I’ve lodged one appeal in the past week where I’ve asked for the bundle as pdfs. DWP send an electronic bundle to HMCTS as I understand it so there is capacity. Well, there is the ability. Capacity is another issue.

Thanks Mike. I hope they come back with something that could work. We can only try.

CHAC Adviser
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I guess there’s no chance of you having a plucky admin who can go in to check post from time to time? We have one that lives within walking distance of our office so they’re going in once a day just to check for post (and to check on the building) and they then scan anything to our SharePoint for caseworkers to deal with.

Elliot Kent
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Our office doesn’t have a letter box so I went to the depot yesterday with some ID and they gave me our post which included a number of directions notices which HMCTS had only issued in hard copy and which I would be unaware of otherwise. I then got a scanning app on my phone and have put the papers on our case management system.

SG LB C
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Income Maximisation Team LB Camden

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Thanks, We are trying to get something regular sorted out.

Terry Craven
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Hope Advice Centre, Liverpool

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I am concerned because one of my clients has been contacted by HMCTS regarding a telephone hearing. The letter does not make any allowance for including me in the proceedings. Has anybody else experienced this problem and if so did you contact HMCTS to resolve the issue.?

Mike Hughes
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I’m on at 11:45am tomorrow. An absolutely stupid case to list. 40 pages missing from the bundle; DWP have failed to comply with a direction to provide the DLA evidence they denied existed until we produced an award letter; HMCTS failed to write to the school (they directed themselves to do so).

I wrote 2 weeks ago to query. Client got a 3 part letter. 1 page is the original listing. 1 page is “don’t turn up” and 1 page is their “it’s by telephone” page. No mention of a rep or their role and nothing out to me.

I emailed to query

- are you seriously choosing this one to go ahead?
- where do I fit in?

Comic genius of a 1 liner back saying “yes, it’s going ahead”. Nothing else. Just that.

ROBBO
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In these cases, we have been contacted by the clerk in the morning asking ‘do you want to be involved?’

Well, yes - so long as the dodgy mobile signal holds out.

Martin Williams
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Just wondering how people are managing to file appeals that cannot be made online (so far as I can tell that applies to everything except, universal credit, ESA and PIP)?

Seems to me that if people are having to print and fill in SSCS1’s then that is going to be quite difficult. I’ve not seen anything about this.

I suspect that simply emailing the appeal to HMCTS with a request that it be accepted as a valid appeal should work as an alternative method- although would be good to have that confirmed by someone who has tried it?

Mike Hughes
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I’ve not lodged an SSCS1 but I have had this email today from Birmingham.

“It is our normal process that we issue paper copies of correspondence to everyone who is party to the proceedings so that they can add it to their appeal documents.  We are however able to issue them electronically if this is requested. I have forwarded on your email to the processing centre so that the documents can be sent directly to your email whilst you are working from home.

If your other colleagues are missing post being sent to the civic centre also they will need to contact us to request correspondence be sent electronically. This is unfortunately not something we are able to do automatically with such a high number of appeals and parties involved. “

I’ve just emailed back a request for directions plus some additional evidence and they appear to have no issue with it.

On that basis I can’t see why there would be an issue with lodging an SSCS1 as you describe Martin.

From the other side
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Scotland are happy to accept an email advising that we are representing the client without the usual signed mandate at the moment. Haven’t had to lodge any SSCS1’s though!