Tribunals not giving decisions on the day

Represented at an FtT this morning and was told we would not have a decision that day but that it would be posted out to us on the same day. Previous hearing had been told the same. We were all on time and seemed to be no delays. Does anyone know if this is a new thing?
Seems like its something to try to speed up the system but at the cost of making people wait longer for the decision and therefore action from the DWP on their claim.

It seems to happen more often than not at our local venue these days. I presume it is probably due to more appeals being listed per session. Generally the client receives the decision within a couple of days so there’s very little by way of a delay.

The main disadvantage to my mind is that you don’t get the opportunity to ask the tribunal to correct any obvious error in the decision on the day. This can be serious- for example, one client’s ESA appeal was successful recently with tribunal agreeing on the decision notice that Reg 35 was satisfied, but then stating he was entitled to ESA including the WRAG. It was clearly an error but DWP have placed client in WRAG so (a) his CB ESA payments will expire very soon and (b) he is being asked to attend WFI’s. I’ve written to TS to ask for the decision to be corrected and reissued but it tends to take forever and it is a hassle all round in comparison to politely pointing out the error to the judge on the day.

It varies according to the judge for us - with one we always warn not to expect a decision on the day

We have always advised client it is a possibility often based on

1. the time of the appointment the last before lunch and last in the day more common
2. Clients who express anger at the tribunal even occasionally you get a gut feeling they are going against something client has presented.
3. Certain judges tend to want the extra time
4. On occasions (rairly) judge has said they want to check out more information

I havent for some years found any judge that would change anything after it was made , this did used to happen in the past particularly for typos

The official line (Bench book) is to avoid decisions on the day. Many/most judges disregard as a matter of personal preference/discretion. It’s very judge dependent but you have to factor in that decisions are typed by clerks. Clerking is being transferred from the TS to the Courts Service. Many of the clerks coming from the court side have no experience of typing up a decision on the day and there is some anecdotal evidence many have rarely typed a document in the course of their previous normal working days.

As a consequence there have been two outcomes:

1) The clerk takes an absolute age to 2 finger type a summary decision and delays of 15 to 20 minutes are being added per case without even taking into account the time needed for arriving at the decision itself. Inevitably some/most judges are going to feel it more appropriate to march on with the people waiting to be heard than to watch an ever increasing delay accrue throughout the day.

2) A decision appears which does not reflect the decision made by the tribunal which then needs to be corrected whilst all parties are still at the venue. To give you an idea of how this works in practice. My last DLA appeal resulted in an award. The judge was a very experienced and excellent full time judge. The decision had to be corrected 4 times before we left the venue. It took 35 minutes for that to happen. With no little irony 4 weeks later I received notification that DWP had successfully requested a further correction to the decision :)

Now, faced with those sorts of issues… much as I would always prefer a decision on the day, right now it’s not top of my list :)