“Improved” format/length of MRNs? 

Anyone else notice a change to DWP MRs (for UC) lately?

I just read a UC WCA MRN where, rather than the usual 1/2 page copy-paste reasons, there were 4 full pages of text - it read more like their response in an appeal bundle (both the format, with multiple headers etc and the length).

It still included the usual choice statements, such as: ‘...[you] have no input from Social Services, are engaging with a Social Worker…’

And, suggesting least demanding WRA as: engaging with your GP, and most demanding as: researching a potential career path - from home - and speaking to the WC about these over the phone.
If you’re not in a catatonic state you can prepare for work, right?

I don’t know if they’re trying to dazzle claimants with more words to dissuade them from appealing. But, on the bright side, more absurd reasoning makes it easier to draft the SSCS1.

There’s nothing new here. There are two sorts of decision notice in circulation - one that includes the DM’s reasoning and one that doesn’t. You have just received one of the former type.

I am not sure exactly why you get one over the other but if you get the one without reasons, you can ask for the reasons to be provided if you really want.

I’m aware there are two versions, this seemed more like a third. Might just have been a DM feeling wordy though.

As they’re daft enough to name themselves I took the opportunity to write back to one within the past year and link their answers directly back to both the claim pack and the HCP report so they could in effect be confronted with their own repeated failure to join the dots rather than just repeat template based answers. Never got a response but inevitably the appeal got the fastest and best offer I’ve ever had.