Tribunals

river123

Hi so I’ve gone in for an appeal, I’ve been told it will be a paper base appeal.. I have just had all the paperwork sent from dwp to myself. Does anyone know how long this could take for me to get a decision? 

Many thanks..

poppy123456

Hi,

Who told you it will be paper based? I beleive these are still quite rare and most have telephone hearings.

There's no timescales but waiting times are not as long as they were but this is for telephone hearings.

Lou67

Hi @river123. I don’t no anything about paper based, but my appeal was requested on June 29th and my appeal by telephone is next Wednesday, so I’ve waited 5 months, which is really quick, as Iv had one before and waited over a year, good luck when it comes. 

river123

@poppy123456 pip appeals have said its paper base and just said I will recieve my descion letter in the post. @Lou67 thank you and aw good luck with yours too 

Lou67

Thank you 😊 

poppy123456

PIP appeals? Which i'm assuming you mean HMCTS. For paper decison's i believe they make these when they have the time to do it and you won't know the decision's been made until you receive the letter.

river123

yes hmcts, I’ve heard that paper ones arnt as long of a waiting time so hopefully I should find out soon. Thank you 

mikehughescq

It will only be a paper based appeal if either 

- you explicitly requested a paper appeal, or,
-a judge has already determined the matter can be decided on the papers and a provisional decision issued.

The first of the above two is a very bad idea generally. The second produces a provisional decision, usually but not always in your favour, but that won’t become a final decision until you and DWP both agree you’re happy with the whole of the decision. If one of you disagrees then the whole thing proceeds to a telephone hearing.

river123

Hi @mikehughescq I think I requested paper based when I was filling it in as I didn’t want to go the actual hearing it’s self, I didn’t realise you can have a telephone hearing until later on as I would of chosen that. Do not many paper hearings get a good outcome then? 

mikehughescq

Paper hearings pre lockdown had a 5 to 8% success rate compared to oral hearings success rate of around 75%. A colleague did some work today. Success rate currently around 92%. 

river123

@mikehughescq
Was that 92% success rate on paper hearings or oral hearings? 😊

cupcake88

River I wish you luck . 

river123

Thanks @cup

river123

@cupcake88

mikehughescq

river123 said:

@mikehughescq
Was that 92% success rate on paper hearings or oral hearings? 😊

No, absolutely not. I was referring solely to the success rate on telephone hearings. The success rate on paper hearings remains dismal and always will be.

river123

Well we will see them figures you have heard may not but be
100 percent accurate. 

river123

Also you can’t really say that the success rate will always be the same on paper hearings..

poppy123456

river123 said:

Well we will see them figures you have heard may not but be
100 percent accurate. 

They are accurate. Mike would not give inaccurate information.

river123

@poppy123456 Things change every day! So about the paper hearings being 5% to 8% success rate, and will always stay the same?.. isn’t accurate in my eyes as you never know if they are going to change that as you and mike are not the ones making them decisions.

poppy123456

Paper hearing success rate has always been low and yes i know that we don't make the decisions, i never said we did.

My advice is, if you can do the telephone hearing or attend in peron (which ever it will be at the time) you should do that, rather than continue with your paper request.

mikehughescq

river123 said:

@poppy123456 Things change every day! So about the paper hearings being 5% to 8% success rate, and will always stay the same?.. isn’t accurate in my eyes as you never know if they are going to change that as you and mike are not the ones making them decisions.

You are of course quite right. Things always change. However, the accuracy of the figures derives from the fact they come direct from HMCTS but also from the fact they’ve been around that level since they were introduced in 1966. After 54 years of being at that level I think you’d do well to find any statistician willing to bet on a rise to anywhere near the success rate of oral hearings-the even just a rise.

More importantly of course things don’t magically change for no reason. Something very specific would have to change. I’ve been doing tribunals since around 1988 so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that what would need to specifically change would be the quality of claim packs; DWP decision making and the quality of the appeal papers and the DWP submission. DWP accuracy of decisions has never historically risen above 66%. When people latched onto that they simply stopped recording the stats. So, chances of that having got better are I think close to nil. Appeal papers over the last 20 years have got progressively worse and I see no reversal in that any time soon. We’re currently at the stage where, if they turn up at all, it’s increasingly the norm for 30  to 50 pages to be missing. 

Claim packs? Again the trend is for worse not better. The PIP claim pack is a fine example. There are several question with no link to the law at all and several which mis-state it e.g. social engagement being described as “mixing with people”. 

So, yeah, things can change but if you’re looking for this specific statistic to change in any meaningful way it’s likely to be worse rather than better.