Not enough points wca

Mark

Sorry to hear this,

You say that you were previously in the Support Group, do you know how you qualified?

You can't make a new claim for JSA anymore, only Universal Credit but I would get face to face advice before doing this. If you don't claim UC then you should be able to continue to receive Housing Benefit as a Nil Income claim, contact your Local Authority.

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 ESA MR & Appeal guide for details of the process, the ESA area also has 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

Mark

Your first priority is to go back through your ESA50 in light of the comments that have been made to make sure that you have shown that you meet the legally defined ESA criteria, as an example; have you tried to bring the Descriptors to your conditions rather than the other way around? Many of the Descriptors have multiple requirements, have you met all of them as you won't score if you have not? Have you echoed the language used, ESA talks about "significant discomfort" in regard to pain?

If you tackle the comments directly then understand what they are actually saying first, so taking off your coat and sitting without problem means that they thought you had reasonable upper body movement (Reaching) and could sit without assistance (Standing and Sitting).
Try and deal with them by reference to your evidence to undermine their opinions.

Gordon