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How many people have won paper based appeal regarding pip
Webber
Member Posts: 3 Listener
How many people have won paper based appeal regarding pip
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The evidence suggests that you are much likely to win an appeal if you appear rather than using a paper appeal. One reason the DWP had a consultation last year to change the system to online digital or paper appeals without the option of appearing in person.
One potential reason for this is that many people do not know or understand the PIP criteria, let alone being able to put a competent paper appeal together. If the paper appeal fails to fill in the gaps the tribunal panel can only judge by what is in front of them, if you appear then they can at least ask for clarification or other questions to help them come to a decision.
If you are genuinely unable to attend before the appeal panel please get advice and help in putting the paper appeal together.
As an individual I stood alone.
As a member of a group I did things.
As part of a community I helped to create change!
Statistically you have a 65% chance of winning at appeal, but this includes both forms of evidence, paper and appearing. I know one advocacy organisation have the following success rates, 90% for those appearing at the tribunal, 50% for those who opt for paper only. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/12/online-benefits-appeals-tribunals-disabled and this was with support from an advocacy group.
That said another member may be able to give better information.
As an individual I stood alone.
As a member of a group I did things.
As part of a community I helped to create change!
Please read the whole post first, but you might find it useful to do an online self test, as this may help you, https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/personal-independence-payment-pip/pip-self-test
A lot of the words used have a set definition within the PIP assessment and these can be found at https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/Documents/Advice%20(public)/pip-guide-language-of-descriptors-activities.pdf
There is also the question of being able to carry out activities safely. There was an upper tribunal decision which has changed the way this should be assessed. The DWP has interpreted this as doing risk assessments to decide the correct description and points awarded. There is a memo which the DWP sent out to enable decision maker to assess what to award. This can be seen at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/658567/adm29-17.pdf
As an individual I stood alone.
As a member of a group I did things.
As part of a community I helped to create change!
1) HMCTS do collect statistics and have done so for years. You are exceptionally naive to believe anything the DWP or HMCTS tell you during a phone call. It doesn’t auger well that you think you’ve spoken to “the courts”. Social security appeals are tribunals. Some may be held at court venues. You may have spoken to a HMCTS call centre operative but you definitely won’t have spoken to “the courts”.
They simply ceased to publish them as they started to fall below the 15 to 19% which was already embarrassing them. Plenty of research done to bear those figures out. Try www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/Tribunal_decision_making_vFINAL.pdf and https://ukaji.org/2017/01/31/oral-and-paper-tribunal-appeals-and-the-online-future/ for starters. Maybe https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/5495/#22772 as well.
2) Most decent advice organisations keep stats on what happens with their oral hearings and what happens with those where they don’t represent but at most send in a submission. The reported rate is between 3% and 10% at the highest but generally between 3 and 5%.
3) Conversations with outdoor clerks (the people who clerk the venues) can be very revealing. In my area they confirm that it’s sbout 5% at best. There are certain panels for whom it would be 0%. Bear in mind that paper appeals are only done if there is space in a session and only if the panel agree. That might be if there are a series of late postponements or the late adjournment of a case which was listed for a double slot. The clerk might have 10 in a drawer but the tribunal might like the idea of an early finish (as might the clerk) so they’ll rush through a couple and that’s that. It should come as a surprise to no-one that paper hearings are an afterthought and that has consequences.
4) UT case outcomes are public domain and it doesn’t take much reading to see the increase across all benefits in paper hearings that were subsequently taken to UT. Ditto the recent growth in UT decisions where the decision to proceed with a paper hearing was criticised.
5) I am not implying anything. I am saying it outright. The success rate for paper appeals is low and low for obvious reasons. It increases if you elect for an oral hearing and it is highest if you attend with a representative.
Any questions?
1) Yes there are what the president of the social entitlement chamber memorably called “no brainers” but the number of oral hearings won inside the 1st few minutes are few and far between. They are usually cases where a detailed written submission has been made in advance by a rep and the panel just need to hear the appellant confirm the facts in the sub before they make a decision (a process which in itself is unnecessary and farcically as there’s legally no such need when the burden of proof is the balance of probabilities). There are also a small number of cases where DWP or HMRC simply don’t understand their own law or (as has happened recently) didn’t even know it existed. However, most cases which win quickly are well prepared; have a detailed written submission sent in advance and are represented with the appellant also in attendance. It is absolutely not the norm nor a regular occurance.
Of my last 100 appeals 3 won inside 5 minutes. 1 was a cohab case with a detailed submission which blew every DWP point out of the water. It would have been adjourned for the appellant to attend had they not done so. 1 was a PIP case arguing over 1 point to enable a move from standard to enhanced. DWP argued that my argument was “outwith the law” and even maintained that line after review by a senior case officer pre hearing following a complaint by me that it was ludicrous to allow it to go to appeal. Again, had the appellant not attended it would have been adjourned. One was a failure to attend which of course would have failed had the appellant not actually attended. They’re memorable precisely because they are that rare.
2) Your call centre person is unlikely to have ever attended a hearing if they are so deluded they believe they are just decided on the papers. Indeed they should be reported for speaking well outside of their knowledge and being so completely misleading. They’re verging close to maladministration. The whole point of an oral hearing is that either the appellant requested it or a district judge decided the paper evidence contained contradictions which could only be reconciled by hearing direct evidence. Anyone who has ever attended a hearing will tell you that the verbal evidence is the determining factor in how the paper evidence is weighed almost every time.
3) HMCTS have a significant backlog of appeals across the country as has been well reported. They have a vested interest in persuading people to accept paper hearings because they are easily disposed of within weeks at no additional cost. To say that the person you spoke to may have had a conflict of interest in advising outside of their knowledge and jurisdiction should be fairly obvious. It is outrageous anyone at HMCTS should be biased towards paper hearings. I’d appreciate it if you’d name the region and give their call centre number as it’s a matter of some concern and needs to be raised as a training issue immediately.
4) There are negligible differences across the benefits. I have already explained why no exaggeration is involved here. I don’t propose to repeat myself.
With all due respect I haven't said anything about your specific chances of winning at all and nor would I as I have not seen your appeal bundle.
The chances of winning something on a scratch card are pretty good according to everything I have read. However, there is no meaningful comparison to be made. A scratch card involves nothing but chance. A tribunal involves multiple elements of chance but an awful lot of other things.
The role of the tribunal is to weigh the evidence; find facts and then apply the law to those facts. Where evidence is contradictory or not obviously supportive then weighing that evidence is much harder and sometimes impossible if the appellant is not there. An excellent written submission with comprehensive supporting evidence (not necessarily medical evidence) may well win a paper hearing but the reality is that the statistics speak for themselves. At best, assuming I know nothing and am completely wrong, you have a chance of being in the 15% who win. If I'm right then it's as low as I've previously stated.
That doesn't take away from the fact that a percentage do win but it's a low percentage whichever way you dress it up and the reasons for that have already been aired. I fully appreciate why someone with mental health issues may not wish to attend (lots of people with lots of other impairments feel the same) but that doesn't take away from the fact that your best chance of winning will always be with having solid evidence and appearing in person. That has been the case for decades and the question you need to ask yourself is really about how important this is to you. Do you want to gamble with a paper hearing or at the very least give yourself your best chance by appearing in person? Is it something you want to go through again repeatedly or never again? Have you, for example, put anything in about the length of award you ought to have? If not, then how are you going to feel if you win the rate of PIP you have identified as appropriate but only get it for a year?
It's very easy to build these things up so it can come as a shock if, for example, having settled for a paper hearing you find that the panel on the day decide they need to have you there in person anyway. At minimum you need to be prepared for that as an outcome rather than just a win or a loss.
I'd appreciate if, as I politely requested, you would name the HMCTS region as their approach on the phone is something which needs to be flagged up either as a complaint or via upcoming tribunal user group or stakeholder meetings.
Don’t worry about which HMCTS office. I’ve since heard similar stories from 2 different HMCTS regions on a Nathanael web site so it’s clear that duff info is widespread. I missed our local Tribunal User Group for the 1st time in 25 years as I was on holiday. I’d have liked to put it to them that this sort of nonsense is being spouted but no matter.
If the written evidence and submission is not strong enough to get a paper based decision then what is the Tribunal to do?
They can't very well talk to the claimant so as to understand the problems better because no one has attended.
Hence it is better for the claimant to give their side of the case to the Tribunal.
I agree that the inequality between paper and oral hearings appears to be unfair but there are other things in play. For example, a person too ill to attend will often be too ill to get representation or get a written submission or evidence which comprehensively makes their case. That can mean that the weakest cases are often the ones which get listed as paper cases too. So it may not just be non-attendance which influences the outcome but how the appeal is presented and evidenced in their absence. Some tribunals will look at those cases and dismiss them. Some will adjourn and insist on an oral hearing. It will vary from case to case and will depend on the specific facts of the case. A well presented case will always have a chance of winning but claimants often don’t know what that means in practical terms.
One of the things to bear in mind is that tribunals take the view that nothing is more powerful then face to face evidence and unless you are completely housebound and your GP, dentist, consultant, pharmacist etc. all come to you then you should be capable of attending an appeal with or without support. Most often people forget that a tribunal can’t just accept an assertion someone is too ill to attend. They need evidence of that. More often than not this is forgotten and a tribunal faced with an assertion someone is too ill to attend but no actual evidence of that will opt to go ahead. They take the view that if you can, for example, make it to your GP then with support why would you not attend something which may decide your level of income for many years to come. Another way they think of this is that if your income is not so important then what is? They’re not always right on this but they are more often than not they’re often given little in the way of reasonable alternatives.
Nowadays of course you could opt for a phone/Skype hearing and soon online dispute resolution will be available too although there’s no evidence that either are any more effective at this stage.
It is also worth noting that being “genuinely seriously ill” is not how you qualify for disability benefits. It’s the functional consequences of that which score points rather than just having the condition itself. Two people can have an identical health issue but the symptoms for one may mean they qualify and slightly differing symptoms for another may mean they don’t.
These people are more likely to be vulnerable in other ways and may well have a 'cast iron' claim but putting it together and having to defend what they have written is probably beyond their capabilities. These claimants will then fail to gain an award despite what the strength of the case is.