“Clinical information contained in the ESA report to support the DLA decision”

I have a case in which the ESA85 has been used to turn down the DLA claim with no other information and DLA have not requested any further information at any stage and the tribunal is scheduled for January. His GP has refused to do a report as the practice no longer does reports unless DLA themselves request it.

nightmare!

You may well need to ask the tribunal to request said evidence from GP.
I recall once advising the GP that I would be requesting the tribunal seek evidence from them and that the tribunal could ask them to attend and give evidence if needed - I got that evidence pretty damn quickly!!

I have had this scenario too and 25% of the tribunal hearings were postponed and 75% went ahead with the oral evidence from the claimant.  Statements from any family, friends, carers, OT etc are always useful if you have nothing…

My usual question: can the GP really add anything relevant to the issues in dispute about the client’s care and mobility needs? Unless s/he visits the cleint at home he may know nothing about it other than what his patient has told him, which is useless as evidence (it simply duplicates what the patient can say more forcefully, and adds no force to it at all).

Which is why I have never seen the point in DCS requesting factual reports from client’s surgeries (other than as a confirmation of the diagnosis). GP’s almost inevitably indicate ‘no’ or ‘not known’ to the care/mob questions. All it does is to provide something for the DM to pin a refusal on.