ESA

Michelle wrote: I thought the DM was supposed to make a decision on all the information not just the medical report.

They are, but they are entitled to assign different weights to the information that they have, the assessment report (in principle) is a direct assessment of the claimants limitations in the context of the ESA Descriptors, a medical report, unless it is phrased correctly usually refers to their limitations in a general sense which usually means it carries less weight, a good (or poor) example of a medical report or letter is one that just says the claimant is unfit for work, with one exception, ESA does not directly test whether a claimant is fit for work or not, it is just a conclusion that results from the process, so such a letter will carry virtually no weight at all with the DM.

Gordon

Michelle wrote: It seems pointless to send any letters in then if they choose to ignore it. I don't know how I can get them to change their mind then if they can ignore everything else. Which looks like that is what they have done. My housing benefit and council tax support has stopped. I can not get my perceptions now.

Re your Housing Benefit, contact your Local Authority you should be able to make a zero income claim and get it re-instated, the CT support will depend on your LA's own regulations.

There is always a point in submitting medical reports and letters if they are available, successful ESA claims are rarely about ticking the right box on the form, a broad range of evidence will be supportive of your stated limitations on the ESA50, but what you do have to aware of is that the DM is not medically trained and therefore is reliant on having information presented to them in a form that they can easily understand.

So you need to explain what you are or rather not able to do for each Descriptor (question) that you feel you should score points for. As an example; For the majority of the time (5 days a week) I am unable to do activity X to this level and for the remaining two days I am unable to do it to this level, if I was to do it I would suffer from this list of problems, this is due to my suffering from condition Y, there is an initial diagnosis of this in report A and further information about the way I am affected in in report B which is consistent with the limitations I stated above, the assessor has commented that I did Z in their presence, this was not the case for reason Q, etc..

Gordon