Missed call today; first assessment tomorrow?

flatbee

Hi folks,

I'm in the process of going through my first claim. I'm due to be having a call from Ingeus tomorrow afternoon for the telephone health assessment. This was communicated with me a few weeks ago so I'm well aware.

Strange thing is, this morning I got a call from an 0800 number that ends in 0700 and does seem to be a legitimate DWP number based on what I'm seeing online (don't want to post the full thing here in case it's meant to be a hidden number). They didn't leave a voicemail, it's been over half an hour since they called, and they haven't tried to call back yet. I've added the number to my contacts in case they do, so I can recognise the number.

All contact about my health assessment call appointment has been direct from Ingeus, which suggests to me that the DWP probably have no idea when my appointment is and that it would be weird if they're calling me to talk about my appointment?

Furthermore, I'm currently on contribution based ESA, so part of me is wondering if it's related to that instead?

I have big anxiety about making or taking calls, but managed to work up the courage to call the number back and there was an automated message saying something like "Thank you for calling the Health Assessment Advisory Service. We tried to call you earlier but you were unavailable. You do not need to call us back as we will try again if we need to."

So does anyone know what this call may have been regarding, in my particular circumstance? I'm seeing people say they were called to be offered someone else's cancelled appointment slot, others saying they were called to provide more evidence to go through the paper-based assessment route (which would be weird given I have my assessment call tomorrow), etc.

flatbee

oops, should have specified: this is about a PIP first claim!

Rosie_Scope

Hi @flatbee, welcome to the community. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to know what they might be calling about until they call back, I know that's pretty anxiety-inducing!

But unless you're expecting anything to change with your ESA claim, I would think it would be more likely to be PIP that were trying to contact you.

If you feel up to it, perhaps you could ask in your assessment tomorrow whether they'd tried to contact you before. As you say, it could be that they had a slot open and were calling to see if you were free.

Hope your assessment goes well. I know they can be pretty nerve-wracking but we'll all be keeping our fingers crossed for a good result for you ☺️