PIPS Letters - the Tribunal that never was!

Client went for a PIPS appeal a few weeks ago and Tribunal awarded Standard rate of both components. No payment was forthcoming so Decision Notice was faxed to PIPS

This morning I recieved a copy letter addressed to me as rep which started “Thank you for for your request to have your PIPS claim looked at again. I have reconsidered the Decision of…....” and went on to state that PIPS had ‘reconsidered the decision’ and were awarding the standard rate of both components. There seemed to be no mention of the appeal at all - in fact the letter sets out the usual appeal rights.

I imagine that there must, strictly speaking, be a reconsideration to implement the Tribunal decision but the whole tone of the letter seemed to imply that this was something done unilaterally by PIPS and by logical extension, something that PIPS might refuse to do if they saw fit.

Obviously this is something that they could not in fact do unless they went to the Upper Tribunal but I am somewhat amazed at the whole tone of the letter, it was as if the Tribunal had never taken place and the change of heart was all down to PIPS!

Has anyone else seen one of these letters in thse circumstances or is this just a one off clerical error?

I am trying to think of whether I have had a similar letter. I have no recollection of any letter that gives any mention to an award following a successful appeal, which suggests that there is one template letter for an award/refusal on a claim and another for an award/refusal on reconsideration. I suppose DWP uses the second one for appeal outcomes.

I don’t think there’s any reconsideration of the award following the appeal, except for someone deciding whether or not to challenge in the Upper Tribunal, so there’s no particular reason why the letter should be in this format. Indeed, the appeal rights are quite wrong.

Aye, had exactly the same thing in all mine. Was put out the same as you the first time, then it dawned that this is just some wierdly drafted standard letter….

Just had an identical letter following a successful PIP appeal ( they had refused any award, Tribunal awarded ER of DLC and mobility) ,  letter went onto to detail the points allowed from activities following ” your request to have your PIP claim looked at again”(?)  - the points allowed simply repeated what the client had argued for (and which were accepted) at the hearing - no mention of appeal hearing etc

And it’s not just PIP. It seems beyond the wit of the DWP to have a standard letter that states:
We have implemented the tribunal decision of X date. Your award is X at Y£. We will pay you arrears now due of £Z.

I have had DWP staff tell me on many occasions that a tribunal decision cannot be implemented until it has been considered by a DM. This is in circumstances where there has been an admin delay at DWP, not because they are considering whether to request a SOR. Some DWP staff seem to have great difficulty understanding that a tribunal is a ‘higher authority’ than a DWP DM and they must implement its decision (subject to DWP right to a SOR and further appeal - a process they don’t seem to understand either!).

I wonder if this is a geographical thing. All of mine start something like “Following your tribunal on xx/xx/xx it has been decided that you are entitled to…” and then goes on to list the points awarded by the tribunal.

Recently, PIP award letters (with or without tribunal) have also included a ‘certificate of entitlement’ or suchlike on the end too. Are you getting these?

If you start from the premise that this government doesn’t want legal aid; doesn’t want tribunals and doesn’t want judges then the next logical question would be why would they expend any effort on a standard letter?

I had some insight into this yesterday via a conversation with Oldham Benefits Delivery Centre. I’ve had a number of issues with payability after tribunals across a range of benefits. Last week a contact centre told me that there was no record of the decision on the system and sent a note through to Oldham for me to get a call back that, with crushing inevitability, did not come. Chasing this up yesterday it became apparent that no-one in the contact centre would have access to the part of the system that would show them a tribunal decision existed. However, when the BDC received a summary decision it did not, as I would have expected, go back to the Dispute Resolution Team. Instead it went straight to Payment Processing and they in turn either made a payment or referred for advice if they thought there was something further at issue. It appears that where a payment is to be made this sits there as a standard letter to be used by PP rather than DRT.

Now, on current form, I have no idea whether any of the above is true or not but it does sound somewhat dysfunctional to me. Surely the first stop for a summary decision ought to be the DRT, who would make a decision to either pass to PP without comment or request a statement of reasons and record of proceedings?