Advice

Hi,
Thanks to your great site I am in the process of appealing esa (0points awarded after a very controversial atos medical) I have received my papers for appeal and have a couple of questions I hope someone can help with.

Is the onus on the claimant to provide the medical information when submitting the esa 50 claim form or as I thought that by giving details of my doctor and consultant that dwp would contact them .

I have since submitted letters of support from my gp and consultant, my former manager would like to offer her support by detailing how I was unable to continue at work due to a deteriation in health inspite of trying different roles and reducing hours, however the welfare rights person helping with my appeal does not think there would be any benefit to this as my letters of support are very good and she thinks this could be suffcient to get the decision changed without going to appeal , I just thought the more support we could have the better, I value any opinion you may have.

Kind regards

Hi
I would send everything that supports your claim.

Gook Luck

Hi Jannigran,

DWP rarely contact the claimant's medical professionals for information, so it is up to the claimant to provide this if possible (many GPs decline to give letters directly to the claimant, wrongly believing that DWP will contact them). A higher court did rule that this might be inadequate for people with mental illness but it has not changed anything!

Nevertheless, we do suggest that claimants put their GP and consultants details on thew form as it might help you case at appeal if these were provided but DWP did not make use of them.

It sounds to me as if your manager's report could be helpful. However, if you have Welfare Rights support then I can only assume that they know what they are doing as they have seen the letters and we haven't (as it would not be appropriate on an open forum).

Thank you very much for your quick response , I will keep you updated with the out come as we expect the tribunal in the next 8weeks, it will be interesting to see if providing the additional medical info helps overturn the decision, unfortunately I was not a member of this site when I initially processed my claim as I think the valuable information you provide could potentially have prevented me going through the appeal process. Keep up the wonderful work you do as it is not only practical advice you offer but keep our spirits up which is so valuable x