Research on Welfare Benefits Tribunals

Welfare rights charity IPR (Islington People's Rights) is carrying out some research about disabled people and welfare benefits tribunals. Tribunals held by phone or video conferencing technology are here to stay, so the research aims to find out how to make them work best for disabled people, in order to make recommendations to government and spread best practice amongst advisers. IPR have launched 2 short online surveys, one for people challenging welfare benefits decisions through the First Tier Tribunal, and one for the advisers, who support them.

Disabled people who have taken part in a First Tier Tribunal during 2021, whether it was held remotely or in person, and whether or not they had representation, can fill in this survey: bit.ly/Tribunal_Clients_Survey

Advisers who have supported one or more disabled people at a First Tier Tribunal can fill in this survey: bit.ly/Tribunal_Advisers_Survey

As well as filling in the advisers survey themselves, IPR would really appreciate it if advisers could encourage their disabled clients to fill in the client survey, and help them if necessary (for example, reading the questions out and ticking the boxes on their behalf). There is also a pdf available to print from IPR's website for disabled people who would prefer to fill the survey in by hand: www.ipradvice.org.uk/ipr-justice/. This link also gives more information about the project.

Please also spread the word among your networks - IPR are looking for as many responses as possible from across the UK.

The deadline is the end of July. If you have any queries, or would like ot get more involved in the research project, please contact Lindsay at IPR at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Can you ask the Mods to put this post at the top of the Forum please.