Mandatory consideration advice - my rate has been reduced

freckles

Hi i wonder if a benefits advisor could help me i,ve been on pip since 2013 and always had the enhanced rate but i had my recent pip assesement on 3rd jan got decision on friday and been put on standard rate the assesor has give me the worse points possible the thing is my health condition has got worse with having ipf that was,nt even taken into account i even sent all medical records to the dwp but not made any difference i,m going for a MR but want to no if my ipf and ASD will be looked at properly because the outlook for ipf is not good at all so please any advice/help would be grateful

peasgood3

From experience - may I suggest trying to get to a Citizens Advice (CAB) centre. They have people who deal specifically with benefit appeals and we waited until we were going to tribunal before we went to them. Had we gone to them earlier - we may well have not even reached tribuanl stage.

It seams standard practice for the DWP to reduce everything. Do you have a current report/letter from your GP to back you up? If not I would suggest asking your GP to support you (the GP may say "the DWP request this from us", but it's doesn't seam to be standard practice any more.),  It appears they don't read medical reports for some reason.

It seams you have your copy of the assessment, pick out descriptors that will help the most - as questioning everything could mean you lose the standard rate you already have - and they could make you go through the whole process again, stopping your current benifit in the meantime.

They are like a spiteful bullying child that you can't reason with.

If a benefits advisor on here can do that same thing - them bless them too.

Hope this helps in some way.

Sam_Scope

Hi @freckles

PIP is about how the impairments affect you day to day rather than the impairment itself. 

You can watch our videos about appealing the decision here 



You can also see the table of desciptors for PIP here.

freckles

Thanks but i got points for desciptors on the last assesement in 2015 for things i could,nt do and this time i got zero for the same questions to which i said on pip form and to the assesor nothing had changed

freckles

My other half has just remembered and told me the assessor who did my pip assesement said she was from an agency and was covering for someone who was sick whats all that about

Pippa_Scope

Hi @freckles, so sorry to hear that you didn't get the outcome you were hoping for and that you found errors in your report, that must have been really frustrating for you. Unfortunately it's difficult to predict how your MR will go ahead of time, but I'd really recommend watching the video linked above so you can feel as well prepared as possible. Let us know how you get on, and best of luck!

freckles

Typical of the DWP take an age to send my assessors report