Challenging a decision.

Hi Gordon, I'm new but researching on this site and not very well as are many who write here.

In relation to your advice "The first stage to challenging a Decision is for you to request a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR), this needs to be done in writing to the DWP, within one month of the Decision, to the office that dealt with your claim" - I'd like to add my recent experience of MRs with Decision Makers.

In Feb and March of this year I asked the DWP for 2 Mandatory Reconsiderations (MRs) and was told by a very rude woman at the DWP that my MR requests had been left in a drawer for 5 weeks as she didn't have "any guidelines" on how to assess my Feb 2015 request for a MR, I appealed a decision to stop all ESA when my partner embarked on a 3 month work trial.

The MR I asked for in March 2015 was in relation to a letter asking me to repay £122. My partner was sacked 6 weeks into the work trial and I've had to reapply for ESA whilst awaiting treatment for Chronic Hep C at Barts.
The decision maker (DM) - I think I spoke to as I can't imagine how anyone else would know about the "appeal in a drawer" - ventured that I hadn't informed the DWP in good time about my partner's work trial, the employer phoned through the night before the trial was due to start, I'd discussed this with my PA at the JC in January and she felt there was nothing I could do until we had a start date. The engineering firm was in the process of moving between offices and put back the start date week after week from November 2014, in the end they started my partner on a Thursday and I couldn't get through to the DWP until the following Monday morning.

I record delivery all my communications with the DWP via Royal Mail - so I have proof of posting during the time frame in relation to the MRs requested in Feb and March 2015. I also keep a copy of everything on my hard drive.

So my question is how can they state that we must reply/request a MR within a time frame they are clearly not adhering to? I don't claim PIP as I'm hoping to be cured of Hep C by September, I also suffer with chronic depression and a chronic bladder condition called IC/PBS - it's incurable and painful. I've been receiving treatment at two hospitals, details have been submitted to the DWP in addition to all my partners hospital treatment details. We have a separate issue with his awful ex employer - he wasn't given a chance to sit the engineering training and exams, I don't know if they found out that he is chronically ill - firms do CRB checks so could have accessed his health records.

I've engaged in Permitted Work in the past and have a "work plan" - I've worked for a company I'm very happy within when well so I don't want to be on ESA forever. I've worked for the DWP in a role that was termed "customer service" but bore no resemblance to a job I'm good at in the commercial sector. I've studied Social Policy at uni but I'm so very weary and ill at the moment I can't think straight, if they're (DWP higher echelons) covering up the amount of suicide they're pushing folks to then I have to live on to fight as a matter of principle, but it's fighting in the dark most of the time, until I found this site. Btw I have a good GP without whom I certainly wouldn't be alive today, his objective has always been to help me get well and in work.

My instinct is the DWP DM in my case has actually unlawfully but, as ever, this is often swept under the carpet, I think of all those depressed and desperate souls who've died as a result of incorrect WCAs, they cannot die in vain.