Feeling uneasy about support with pip application

Amonia wrote:

Gordon wrote: 3. The DWP may look at your claim when they receive your appeal submission, but if they do it is most likely that this will not happen until immediately before the hearing. Be aware they are only required to make a more favourable award, this may not be the award you want.

Hi Gordon. From your appeals guide it seems that after recieving my appeal the dwp will create a counter report which will be sent out to me. I will then have some time to counter their arguments and submit further evidences before the hearing. However in your above sentence it seems that they will not look at the claim until 'immediately before' the hearing. This wouldn't give me time to produce a case.
Did you mean that they will produce the reports and send it to me and I will get time to produce a counter case, however as regards to them changing the decision in my favour, this is most likely to occur immediately before the hearing(even though they could have done it when recieving and look at the appeal. Is that what you meant?

The procedure for an appeal is;

- the claimant makes an appeal request to HM Courts & Tribunal Service

- when the Tribunal Service (TS) have accepted your appeal they forward a copy of the request to the DWP

- the DWP create their submission and send it to the TS.

- the TS send you a copy of the DWP submission

- you create your submission and send it to the TS

- the TS send a copy of you submission to the DWP

The last two steps can be repeated up to about a week before the hearing.

The DWP will only look at your appeal submission(s) in the week before the hearing.

Gordon

Amonia wrote: Also:

2. once they see my appeal and produce the report, is it likely to be personalised to my appeal e.g. will it says 'we think descriptor d is only for navigational help as was our guidance about navigation based public transport wherease the claimant wants it other grounds' or is it going to be the same detail lacking papers as with the mandatory reconsideration notice?

3. If they do simply state that the dispute is based on wheather planning journeys descripor d amounts to navigational help and that higher transport costs do not allow one to score on the descriptor, wouldnt this be a good case to just change to a paper hearing and submit your template detailing Judge Agnews perspective and relevant law about higher transport costs? It seems to me my case will not change in any other respects as the evidence is quite good and previous decision makers didn't change anything, so if its a matter of them choosing which law they want to apply, don't you think a paper hearing is sufficient at which point they'll take their pick and its not really neccesary for me to be there?

Many thanks

2. See my previous post. I would not expect the DWP to offer any further justification of how they reached their Decision in their submission for an appeal.

Typically their submission will consist of a covering letter, this will reference the law, what evidence they used to make their Decision and an explanation of how they reached that Decision, this is unlikely to reveal any new.

3. It's not our role to advise members whether they should attend a hearing or not, this is a Decision that only you can make, however, some issues that you should consider;

- the success rate for Paper hearing is significantly lower than that for a hearing that the claimant attends.

- in case it is not obvious, you need to consider whether your attending diminishes your case

- this is not just a matter of the panel deciding what law applies, this question is secondary to whether you meet the criteria in the first place, the panel may only be able to decide this by speaking to you.

- higher transport costs are most definitely not relevant to your claim

Gordon

Amonia

None of the PIP activities take into account the extra costs that a claimant may have as a result of their disabilities, having those costs is not a reason to make an award and a Tribunal panel will not consider any issues in this area.

You need to separate the DWP documents that are guidance and no more and the legal definitions of the activities, you are being assessed against the legal definitions only.

The DWP will not provide any more detailed reasoning, other than that which I have already mentioned. There will not be anything new in the week prior to the hearing. What I am saying is that they will look at your information at this time to see whether they can make a new Decision before the hearing, if they do not revise the Decision in your favour then they are not required to provide any further explanation of this.

As a general comment it doesn't really matter why the DWP have made or not made a Decision, the appeal panel will be looking from scratch to see whether you meet the criteria or not, this is why simply stating that the DWP have, in your opinion, misapplied the law will not necessarily result in an award. If you have not shown that you meet the criteria in that area then whether the DM acted properly or not is moot as you will not receive an award.

Gordon

Amonia wrote: I understand this. However since the dwp may influence/or by misinterpretation the tribunal may follow Judge jacbobs with regards to the interpretation of what 11 d includes in terms of 'assistence' i.e. navigational only, shoudn't I pre-emptively argue and submit the judge agnes case to show that I do meet the criteria?

Thanks and sorry for the constant barage of questions.

The problem, based on your posts, is that you are putting the cart before the horse!

Judge Agnes's Decision does not show that you meet the criteria, you explaining the problems that you cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid and what would happen if you tried, are the only thing that will do this.

If you can't show this or the panel do not accept your explanation then it does not matter whether they accept Judge Agnes's Decision or not, as you will not score points.

It is only after they accept that you are limited in your going out the that the UTT Decision becomes relevant to you scoring points.

I'm not saying that you should not include details of the UTT Decision, you should, but you must also explain/show that you have problems following a journey.

Gordon