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Cost of FTT?
Has anyone an idea how much it costs DWP/public purse to administer an appeal. Can’t find anything anywhere other than general costs of millions.
Trying to argue discretion not to recover an o/p of £100 which DWP are inisting on sending to FTT.. (no other grounds to challenge)
just thought it might be worth mentioning…
hi,
see following extract from hansard on 26 january 2012 -
Mr Djanogly ...
The estimated total cost of the 112,320 ESA appeals disposed of from April 2011 to October 2011 in which the work capability assessment was a factor is £26.844 million.
These estimated costs were calculated by multiplying the average cost of an individual first-tier tribunal—Social Security and Child Support case in 2010-11 (the latest period for which these data are available)—by the number of ESA appeals disposed of in which the work capability assessment was a factor.
according to my calculation, 26,844,000 divided by 112,320 is 238.99573, so maybe answer is £238.99 for the tribunal element, although clearly that doesn’t take into account dwp cost.
Interesting. The following are the daily fees for fee-paid (ie part-time) tribunal members (from the judicial salaries page on justice.gov.uk):
Social Security and Child Support
Judge 448
Medical Member (IIDB) 371
Medical Member (ESA/DLA) 310
Financial Member 302
Member with experience of disability 192
So the total daily fees for, say, a DLA day would be £950. Suppose they disposed of 6 oral cases, that’s nearly £160 per case in fees alone. Then there’s all the admin salaries and the rent of premises and so on. But it does vary a lot: I used to deal with half-day complex cases, sometimes with two sessions (£448 per case), and in a day of basic IS/JSA etc paper cases could do 15-20 (under £25).
Full time Tribunal judges are on just over £100k
Some months ago we represented a client who had appealed a decision that he had incurred an overpayment of income support of £135. After losing at FTT the case went to Upper Tribunal and the decision was held to be erroneous in law. When it was sent back to the Tribunals Service, a Judge issued directions to the DWP requesting a revised submission that addressed a particular legal point. The Department was also invited to concede the appeal/use its discretion not to recover, in the light of the small sum involved.
Needless to say the DWP failed to provide a new submission and also failed to send a Presenting Officer, as directed. Neither did it concede. The client’s appeal was allowed, second time round. I dread to think what all this cost the public purse - but our client was delighted.