PIP Appeal

Hi,

Just wondering if this is a common occurrence (never happened to me before and seemed a little odd), plus I wanted just tell someone of this unusual experience at our Tribunal Service today.

I had two appeals today with the same Tribunal Panel (I assume having the same judging panel is quite common now) which I am going to request SOR’s for (various reasons which I’m not happy about).

However, the strange thing was the Judge in both of my appeals ended in the exact same words for both of my clients. It was literally the same words for both cases, both of which were vastly different and asking for different things - it seemed to me like he was reading from a script almost.

Just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this - the panel also spent the same amount of time on each case decided (5 minutes).

Maybe I’m just reading too much into this after a long day (haha)

Bcfu - 01 March 2023 08:41 PM

Maybe I’m just reading too much into this after a long day

This.

Not really sure what you are implying or looking for with this post but:

1. Tribunals hear lists of cases across half day sessions, they don’t just put a panel together to hear your one case, so yes if you have multiple appeals heard on the same day at the same venue, you’ll typically get the same panel. You can actually pull most of the lists up a day in advance here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-tier-tribunal-social-security-and-child-support-hearing-lists

2. Judges deal with lots of appeals. It’s natural when you deal with lots of similar conversations, you will adopt ‘stock’ ways of dealing with certain common things. There are parts of advice interviews which are like that. It doesn’t mean they are reading from a script, although I struggle to see what the objection would be if they were.

3. Not sure you can take much from the fact that they deliberated for a similar time in each case, although if the tribunal was only away for 5 minutes to make a decision, it rather suggests that they did not find the appeals particularly difficult to decide.

It’s rather more likely that you have had a long day, as opposed to having come face to face with some sort of experimental AI tribunal or whatever.

Thanks - Thats all I was looking for in the post! It was my first time encountering this