SDA-ESA: My journey has begun

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for your advice. I’ll give things at least another two weeks before sending a SAR or any other communication if 4-6 weeks is the norm.

Think me a fool, but I had not considered it a risk that my file might not reach the right DWP desk straight away. I had thought that Atos recommendations are sent electronically. I suppose ESA 50 forms that Atos have finished with are sent by post. What exactly does the word “file” mean in the DWP dictionary?

Mari

It will soon be five weeks since ATOS returned my file to the DWP. When I first learned of this from ATOS I was advised “I would expect that they [the DWP] will write to you with their Decision within the next couple of weeks, if they don't then I would chase them for an update.”

On the basis of this advice, my carer phoned the DWP after three weeks. No decision. I reported back to the forum and was advised “you are probably looking at 4-6 weeks, it would likely have taken 2 weeks for the file to get to the right department!”

I had planned to ask my carer to phone the DWP again at the five-week point with a view to my issuing a Subject Access Request to the Data Controller after six weeks. Then I read last week’s post by Billhan. It’s numbered #124561. Billhan reported, “I sent my form back to atos on the 7th may 2013 and on the 17th july 2014 it arrived at the dwp and today I got my letter 6th of September.” That’s a gap of seven weeks between ATOS forwarding a claimant’s file to the DWP and the claimant receiving notice from the decision maker.

Is the time period a file lies around the DWP waiting for a DM to look it over getting longer? I don’t want to put my carer through an excess of phones calls. Neither do I want to risk submitting a pre-decision SAR to the Data Controller before I really have to. I don’t want to jeopardise the ATOS recommendation.

So is there any evidence that the DWP are taking longer to reach decisions?

Thanks,

Mari

Thanks again, Gordon

I’ve been wracking my brains for some reason why it should take so long for the DWP for consider the ATOS recommendation. The summer-break would have affected ATOS, too, and they were remarkably swift to look over the ESA50.

Another phone call soon, I think. The idea of a pre-decision SAR scares me somewhat because my condition is progressive and although I am not anticipating submitting further information before a decision I can’t know for sure.

Mari