DWP records

deeds1970

Hi,can anyone advise please?over the time if a claimamt as an MP write on behalf of claimant do DWP keep on file or correspondence concerning that claimamt even if the calls,letters,email were sent by other people
Such as MP,gp,courts etc..
Or is it just the claimants correspondance alone.
Thanks in advance 
Paul

deeds1970

Can i also add do capita/atos also have all info on claimants that dwp hold when reviewing them
?
Reasons being dwp capita are saying my mp etc as not contacted them,however mp says differently .personally i dont believe either parties .

woodbine

I suppose to start with you could ask your MP to contact them again?
You can request a subject access request (SAR) to anyone afaik.
Hope you are well today?

https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-copies-of-your-data/

wilko

Hello, as @woodbine states you can request a copy of all the information that the DWP on you reference to PIP, be warned when I did this I received a large package delivered by courier with every detail about my claim. It contained a stack pages about an inch or more in height bigger than A4 printed both sides. Reference was made about telephone calls with a reference number to access these if required. I shredded nearly all keeping only relevant pages for future reference.

deeds1970

Thanks.
So im right in thinking dwp literally have everything included in claimants file  all 3rd parties whoever that may be , who contacted dwp in regard to that person even if was not on their behalf too.

mikehughescq

DWP will initially hold copies of everything but most of it is disposed of relatively quickly. Intrigued to know why now.

woodbine

I would agree that the DWP doesn't hold onto stuff for long, an example being when you were transfered from DLA to PIP you could ask that they use any info they had from your DLA claim, it soon became obvious that it wasn't much in a lot of cases.

mikehughescq

That’s an interesting one @woodbine. Some DWP records are destroyed I shed 6 months. Others explicitly at 14 months but many not at all. DLA is part of the “Not at all” element. DWP have a long history of simply not checking properly what they do have So what looks like “sorry, we don’t have much” is actually “we’ve not looked”. 

I’ve had one where they swore there had never been a successful claim and were happy to put that in black and white in an appeal bundle. Looked rather stupid when I put in the award letter.

They’ve been doing it for years. I had Supplementary Benefit cases where they says they’d nothing and then produced home visit records going back to 1966.

The SAR is your friend.