Phantom ESA50 to Medical as marked 'Mental Health'

Thanks Gordon, this is a real nightmare

I assume Atos won't accept a copy of the SAR form printed by the DWP, so we'll send a template letter to Atos, and SAR form to DWP.

I was very interested to read this as a similar thing happened to a friend of mine except in his case he was called for a medical without having completed an ESA50. When I queried this on his behalf, as I knew that people with mental health conditions fare much better if written evidence is provided rather than just the medical, I was at first lied to and told the form had been sent. I too doubted my friend and thought he had forgotten to fill it in. It transpired that they hadn't sent an ESA50 but had just sent for a medical on the basis of him being flagged as having mental health problems. I insisted he be sent one as I knew that on the basis of a medical by itself he would possibly be declared fit for work. Eventually, on the basis of the ESA50 and the accompanying evidence from doctors he was placed straight into the Support Group with NO medical required! This practice seems to go against all the evidence that has been gathered that shows written evidence is crucial in cases of mental health and it makes me extremely worried for all those people who are not aware of how the new system works and, like my friend, are going straight to medicals with no protection from the evidence in an ESA50. I wrote to MIND to explain what happened to my friend and strongly suggest other people make them aware of this practice.

Hi, we've received an update and success, but I've not been able to update you sooner due to health.

He's been put in the support group. Thank you all so much for your help

After sending in the ESA50 and SAR to DWP in December 2013, we received the SAR info requested 40 days later, then a week later the ESA award letter.

However it's still a puzzle as to what happened. Despite him denying it to me, the SAR shows he had in fact previously sent in an ESA50 with scrawl over the pages to it, *but* he'd signed & dated it as November 2013 after the date he received the BF223, and not signed and dated it in June 2013 as claimed by the DWP

There is a suspicious 'date received' stamp 7th July on the ESA50, not the 9th July date received that DWP stated in phone calls. The stamp is just a date, the second ESA50 sent in December has DWP wording within the date received stamp which looks more official. It makes one wonder if someone back-dated the 'date received' stamp if he returned an ESA50 in November 2013 rather than in June 2013

Sorry there are mistakes in my post - Each reference to 'July' should say June

Thanks Gordon