absence of notifications

All my clients who are reassessed and pass the WCA don’t receive any notifications. It is true that ESA is not awarded for a definite time (so there is no new ‘decision’ after the assessment). However, the absence of notifications, even a phone call, makes them live in a state of uncertainty and fear after medicals, for months on end. Sometimes they get a new ESA50 to fill in, while they are still anxiously waiting to hear about the outcome of their previous medical.

This has happened also with formal decisions. For example, one of my clients received a new ESA50 while she was still waiting for an appeal being processed. When we phoned, we found out that she had won the appeal three months before (on revision), but the DWP had failed to notify both me (her representative) and her.

Also, similar things have happened with other benefits - two clients who had their new claim for JSA refused were notified by phone and not by letter; regarding one of them, they said that it’s a new ‘friendly’ way of notifying decisions.

Please any comment or help with this, thanks.

This is a very troubling and annoying development. I thought that all decisions had to be made and put in writing.
I have had to do a load of “late” appeals to try and get clients into the Support Group of ESA as they had no idea they were in the WRAG (or even what a WRAG means) due to not being properly informed.

How many clients placed in the WRAG will lose their benefit after 365 days without having a clue beforehand due to not being correctly informed?

This is unlawful as a decision concerning LCFW and LCFWRA, as part of the outcome decision, carries a right of appeal under s12 of the SSA 1998.  Decisions which carry a right of appeal under s12 shall be notified to the claimant in writing in accordance with reg’ 28 of the Decisions and Appeals Regulations 1999.

Thank you Nevip, your input is great. I think I will use it quite a lot!

I had a case similar to that described by the Sunderland adviser: one of my clients lost part of his ESA (due to a pension), but he could have appealed against a decision that he was in the WRAG many months before.

The DWP seems quite ready to accept late appeals on this. Yet, this is not good enough: if they want to reassess people every two minutes, they have to be prepared to do all the paperwork… every two minutes. They can’t have it both ways.

nevip - 07 August 2012 01:58 PM

This is unlawful as a decision concerning LCFW and LCFWRA, as part of the outcome decision, carries a right of appeal under s12 of the SSA 1998.  Decisions which carry a right of appeal under s12 shall be notified to the claimant in writing in accordance with reg’ 28 of the Decisions and Appeals Regulations 1999.

Whilst you are absolutely right why do we continually have to remind the DWP? Are decision makers trained at all these days? I seem to spend most of my time doing this, or chasing letters that have not been processed onto the system, or arguing over implicit consent, or waiting for call backs that never happen. Where oh where have the customer service managers gone and how much is all this costing the public purse?

My brain hurts and it’s not even Friday… rant over and I shall curl up in a ball now!

If this has become an issue throughout the UK, we should think about co-ordinating a sort of collective complaint. I don’t know how this would work though.