HEALTH ASSESSMENT ADVISORY SERVICE

whitewitch wrote: phone call today saying they have decided that he is fit for work!!!!!!
he has to go to the job centre on Fri to claim job seekers ..
he has a doctors certificate up to November.. I take it that this is no longer valid..
how do we go about appealing their decision ??
HELP pls ..

Sorry to hear this.

First of all there is no legal requirement for your husband to claim JSA unless you need the money, if you do then he should inform the JC+ advisor that he is challenging the Decision and he should be able to negotiate a minimum Job Search agreement.

The first stage to challenging a Decision is for you to request a Mandatory Reconsideration, this needs to be done in writing to the DWP, within one month of the Decision, to the office that dealt with your claim, have a look at our PIP MR & Appeal guide for details of the process and template letters that you can use to make the request with.

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/esa1

You should contact the DWP for a copy of the assessment report (ESA85), if you have not already done so, I would phone them but again follow up the request in writing. Once you have the assessment report you will have a better understanding of how the DWP Decision Maker has come to their conclusions and will then be able to argue against them.

Your primary task is to show that you meet the criteria, there are many reasons you may have failed, you need to address each of these but don't get bogged down in criticising the assessment report unless you can clearly show that it is incorrect, it is a lot easier to argue the facts of the situation;

"the assessor recorded that I walked 50m, I did but they have failed to document that I had to stop every 10m for a rest due to breathlessness"

than their opinions

"based on my observations of the claimant walking I believe that they can reliably walk more than 200m.

When you have a better idea of the issues with your claim, come back to the forum and we will do our best to help.

Gordon

whitewitch

To be honest the advice remains the same, you should concentrate on showing that your husband meets the criteria, I'm not saying that you should ignore the ESA85 but the Decision Maker will assume that it is accurate unless you can show there are serious errors, which from your post, there appear not to be.

If you do tackle what the assessor has said, then do so only where it is to your advantage, for example, if the assessor said he climbed the stairs when he didn't and he has no problems doing this then there is no advantage in your highlighting this to the DM.

Make sure you read and understand the Descriptors, for example for Standing and Sitting it doesn't matter whether he stood or sat or stood and sat, it is the time before he would be forced to move away from a workstation that counts.

Gordon