ESA 50 repeatedly walking

del wrote: Does anyone know what they mean in ESA50 Q1 for example 50m repeatedly, how many times are they referring to and over what timescale. My walking gets worse from starting and I would have to rest but I do not know if they mean continue walking 50m one after the other or how many in an hour for example. Difficult to explain what I mean. I am also confined to bed on days.

The first thing to say is that this is not a walking test, but rather a test of your mobility, which includes whether you can self-propel a manual wheelchair, irrelevant of whether you use a wheelchair or even own one, although the usage must be reasonable.

There is no clear definition of what repeatability means, other than in relation to what an average person would be able to do. I think it reasonable to assume that a task need to be repeated more than once, but whether this is two times or many times, depends on the test being looked at, for the mobility test, I think the value is low.

You also need to consider the time it takes before an activity can be repeated, if it is only a few minutes then I would expect a claimant to be less likely to score points than if it was an hour, for example.

Finally, this test also any exhaustion you night suffer from as a result of your carrying out the activity, for those suffering from illnesses such as ME, this should include any exhaustion that results asynchronously from the activity e.g. the next day.

Please refer to the ESA Claim guides for a more detailed explanation

www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/help-for-claimants/esa

Gordon