extending time between MR and appeal

To be in time, your appeal must be received by the Tribunals Service within one month of the date on the Mandatory Reconsideration Notice. Your appeal will be considered late if it is received more than a calendar month after the date on the notice. If it is late you must give reasons why it is late. If you do not give reasons for lateness your appeal may not be considered.

The tribunal service may write to you to ask you why your appeal is late, but you cannot be sure they will do this, so include your reasons on the form. Many late appeals are accepted so don’t give up if you are outside the one month time limit.
If your appeal is late and you have given reasons for lateness the Tribunals Service will treat it as having been received in time, unless the DWP object within 4 weeks. If they do object you will have a chance to comment and a Tribunal Judge will then decide whether to accept it.

This means that if your appeal is going to be late, but you have a good reason or reasons for lateness, for example being in hospital or out of the country, you can still appeal. Any reasons are better than none, and in many cases unrepresented claimants will have a late appeal accepted simply on the grounds that they weren’t aware that they should have appealed within one month.