archie wrote: Hi this is my first post. My wife who suffers from very acute anxiety has last week been successful at tribunal in Basildon and been placed in the support group with a recommendation for a review in 2 years. While this is of course good news she has now received a letter confirming this from the tribunal and I have a couple of questions.
1 There is a mistake in the decision it states 'she can never go out unaccompanied' she did not say this at all, does this matter?
2 Amid all the jargon at the bottom the letter says that the decision of tribunal is not binding on the DWP, and that the DWP can appeal against it. Does anyone know wether this happens often, my wife is literally being driven to the brink of suicide by this whole process.
Congratulations on the award.
The Going Out Descriptor has no Support Group equivalent so it should not matter that this is in error.
It is rare for the DWP to appeal a FTT Decision, but it does happen, you should know in about two weeks whether they intend to do this, there is a maximum one month period from the date of the Tribunal for them to start the process.
Updated payments usually take 6-8 weeks, you may be able to shorten this by faxing a copy of the Tribunal Decision to the ESA Payments department, you should be able to get the number by phoning your local DWP office.
Gordon
