Health Assessment (my journey) :-(

Gordon wrote: Stressed

It's important that you understand that this is not about your disputing individual pieces of evidence like your using a couch, these would not constitute an Error.

You say the UTT dissed the 2015 report, was this FTT hearing a follow on from the UTT Decision or is it separated from it by a reassessment. In the case of the latter, how would the panel know that the UTT had dismissed the 2015 report?

Gordon

Yes I know it's also important to distinguish between error if law and error of fact.

The situation in 2015 was that i went for a medical and failed. The person that did the medical not only didn't mention important facts but also told a lot of obvious lies. I did the mandatory reconsideration and that failed.

Now I thought that it ended up going to the upper tribunal but I don't remember needing the statement of reasons so I think it was dealt with by the first tier tribunal.

The tribunal awarded me enough points to have my ESA reinstated and said I was not to be reassessed fit at least 2 years.

Gordon wrote: Stressed

If this was a previous FTT hearing then it is entirely separate from this latest one and the panel would have no knowledge of what occurred during the previous hearing so you cannot argue that the 2015 report was invalid as there is nothing to support this argument.

You need to look for an Error that is solely the result of this latest hearing.

Gordon

Ok the citizens advice pointed out a few point of error of law for me.

The reason I asked was because they based a lot on the 2015 medical and not much on the 2015.

Surly the 2015 medical is irrelevant as a lot can change in 4 years.


When writing my request to have the upper tribunal look at it, do I need to go through all the descriptors...etc of do I just need to write a simple letter stating what the errors of law are?

Gordon wrote: Stressed



You need to deal solely with what is in the SoR, not the detail of the evidence presented or the arguments that you made.

Gordon

Thanks Gordon

So a simple request saying something like

I would like to request my case being seen by the upper tribunal as they have not given good reason to refer to my 2015 medical report (I'm just us ing this as an example not that that's my reason).

Stressed: I can empathise with your frustration. A lot of what you describe mirrors our experiences. I had to deal with the paper-work on behalf of my wife as, although she is an intelligent person, she felt overwhelmed by the process. In short, she has twice been taken out of the Support Group and we have twice been to Tribunals where these decisions have been overturned and she was put back into the Support group. At the second Tribunal, the judge asked if she was claiming PIP, which she wasn't, and we were told that she should claim it. We did put in a claim and it was quite quickly dealt with and she got the maximum award on both elements. We used the advice and guidance in this forum, particularly about the importance of the Descriptors. The point which I am slowly coming to, is that we too were outraged by the conduct of the ESA medical assessments and subsequent reports and we too were using language such as "the assessors' lies" etc. I had accompanied my wife to both assessments and on reading the reports submitted to the DWP, I could barely recognise them as a reflection of the reality. She got zero points. I took advice from this forum and, with some difficulty, put my anger to the side and concentrated on the paperwork. The emphasis Gordon puts on the Descriptors pointed me to that aspect of the system. We asked for the Mandatory Reconsideration and, as we expected, were rejected. We based our appeal on the detail provided by DWP which showed they had not fully considered all the evidence submitted by us. We went through their report line by line, matching the requirements of the Descriptors to all the evidence which had been provided and highlighting what they had missed out. They had also made quite a few assumptions such as "She walked 7 metres from waiting room to Examination room so can walk 50 metres." We challenged every assumption which was not evidence based. Evidence we had provided had which had clearly not been considered we highlighted where they fit a Descriptor. We concentrated on the Descriptors and found the example answers on the Guidance in this forum helped a lot. We decided against a direct attack on the assessment using emotive words like "lies" and "untrue" as that doesn't put any points on a Descriptor.
To get the award you have to get the points on the Descriptors. My personal view ( I have no evidence to substantiate this view) is that DWP had not properly or thoroughly read through the whole case file which then allowed us our "Wins". Follow Gordon's advice and check the Descriptor requirements above all else and put the understandable outrage about the system to the side is my advice (for what little it's worth). Best of Luck and let us know how you get on.
Rumple.
PS - we attended the Tribunal Hearings in person. I know some people, for whatever reason, cannot face that prospect but it did give us an opportunity to clarify some points to the Tribunal's satisfaction which I suspect may not happen when they are just reading paper-work. (again this last bit is not supported by any evidence as I am guilty of making an assumption here )