When DwP hold medical evidence from the tribunal

tru88le

Do the  first tier tribunal ever know if the dwp has  pulled your medical evidence.?
It seems such a dastardly trick to be able to remove your opponents evidence secretly and have them turn up with no medical back up.

mikehughescq

The implication of your post is that there are circumstances in which DWP can withhold evidence from a tribunal; that the tribunal would have no way of knowing that, and, this is a deliberate way of undermining otherwise legitimate appeals. I think this has been done to death on a previous thread but for the avoidance of doubt...

To be absolutely clear, there are no such circumstances. I’ll take you through the possible scenarios one by one.

1 - if you sent your medical evidence to DWP as part of a claim then it must appear as part of the evidence in an appeal bundle. As all parties should get the same appeal bundle you would know straight away that it was missing as soon as you got your copy and you’d be able to alert the tribunal. You can have no issue with DWP in those circumstances. 

2 - if your copy of the appeal bundle contained the medical evidence but the tribunals copy did not then that is a copying error by HMCTS. It’s unfortunate, and does happen quite regularly, but it’s nothing to do with DWP. Whether you are unrepresented or not there are few things you can assume in an appeal hearing and so the first thing you would check (even more so with telephone hearings) is all parties have the same papers. Again, you can have no issue with DWP in such circumstances.

3 - if you sent in your medical evidence to DWP but it was in respect of an earlier claim then, unless it was used in respect of the current claim, DWP would be right to exclude it. Again though, you’d know this as soon as you got the appeal bundle.

4 - a tribunal have the power to exclude evidence if it is late or irrelevant. They also have the power to exclude evidence if they believe it would be harmful to you to see it. Just as importantly they have no choice over excluding some evidence where it is illegal for it to be disclosed in the first place. You can read the basic rules on this at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/488476/consolidated-sec-rules.pdf

Most people rarely read their full GP records before sending them in or realise the implications of doing so. The best examples I can think of here are where your GP records contain evidence of abuse of which you may have no recall or your GP records are not exclusively about you e.g. they contain references to other members if your family. This is not just a vague data protection issue. There is a very famous recent case in which a representative from a well known advice organisation absent minded it took a whole bundle of medical evidence and sent it into the tribunal without reading it. It contained lots of child protection information and the repercussions were very serious indeed. Sometimes appeal bundles contain a note to say evidence has been excluded and sometimes they do not. Indeed in my experience it’s more likely a clerk will get instructions to exclude evidence and will include it in error than it is for DWP to deliberately exclude it.

5 - DWP often say evidence does not exist when it does. Nowadays it’s easy enough to do a subject access request under the FOI to sort this but it’s easy enough to trip them up and, in every case I have ever come across, evidence had not been deliberately excluded, it had just been assumed it didn’t exist or the decision maker simply didn’t look hard enough. 

Two fine examples on this:

- decision makers would routinely say that DHSS visiting officer records did not exist or had been destroyed in Supplementary Benefit cases post 1988. Inevitably the presenting officer, after a few bad experiences with reps like me pulling them apart, would go check perhaps in the week before the hearing and would find years of the stuff. I had several cases where records went back to 1966 and one which went back to National Assistance. Nowadays a SAR via the FOI would sort that.

- I recently had a case where DWP contradicted the appellants claim there had been previous disability benefit claims and refused point blank to comply with a judges direction for copies of those claims to be added into the appeal bundle. They were happy to say in writing that the appellant was wrong. Unfortunate then that the appellant was able to produce both previous rejection and award letters!

There are few unique scenarios of injustice in social security. Hang around long enough and you’ll have seen something before. In 34 years I have not seen the scenario you describe. I strongly suspect that what actually happened was one of the above.

Even if the remote possibility of your scenario being some new horror turns out to be an accurate reading of events I think it’s important to remember that very few cases turn on medical records and, if you think yours might have, then what’s really being said is that your claim pack; other supporting evidence and verbal evidence on the day was not sufficient to secure an award. The burden of proof in social security cases is quite low. Things just have to be proven on the balance of probabilities so if a tribunal can’t find in your favour based on your appearance on the day then realistically it is at best a really long shot that the inclusion of medical records would have somehow magically changed that.

It’s important to understand this as the exclusion of one item is rarely crucial. I recently did a case in which it became apparent that either the clerk had had a brain fart with page numbering or between 30 and 50 pages were missing from my bundle and, it soon became clear, from the panels bundle too. The appellant and I chose to go ahead rather than request an adjournment because I was confident my submission dealt with enough to get the appropriate award either way. The tribunal was won unsafe 15 minutes. 

To conclude then, if your medical records were, in your mind, the thing which has deprived you of an award, I think that is so unlikely as to be obviously wrong. If you think DWP deliberately excluded those records then, as I have hopefully comprehensive it dealt with above, that is simply not the case.

tru88le

Sadly for me  i replued but scope withheld my replues.
Ive reread your post and need to know which of your examples rule 24 relate to when evidemce is withheld on that rule. I cant find any mention of it let alone done to death.

mikehughescq

Rule 24 has nothing to do with the withholding of evidence. It simply says that when an appeal is lodged DWP must put together an appeal bundle and include various documents routinely. 

tru88le

Do you know why they mention a part of this rule when they decidie not to include documents? Thx.

Would they cite this rule when deciding not to include documents on account of their being out of date etc?

Does anyone have the link to the thread where "this has been done to death"? So I can see if it mentions what i'm interested in.
Which in my case is the dwp have not put my medical notes in the bundle and they mentioned a part of rule 24 
that related to DLA medical notes in terms of them being outdated and thereforedidnt put them in..

I know many people here dont see medical data as very important  as evidence but I have on record a tribunal judge saying the medical notes were "of cardinal importance to this case", i dont care to hear an opinion of why he said that but these words being ftom a tribunal jjudge rather contradict the views of many  and I doubt they are unique to the case in question.
That said why would the dwp exclude such information, especially whrn the said DLA evidence was only three months old and formed the basis of an indefinite award just weeks prior to being 'out of date'
Anyway if anyone knows the link to the font of all knowledge on the subject i'll look myself.
Thx

mikehughescq

They would cite the rule because they considered it relevant. Most obviously because they’d elected to exclude documents which they either considered irrelevant or because they’d been told to exclude them e.g. because they posed a risk to the appellant. So, yes, if DWP considered documents irrelevant because they were out of date then this is the procedural rule they would cite. It’s important to remember that it’s a judgement call e.g. if a client gave me a 10 year old report which confirmed their diagnosis and prognosis I wouldn’t consider using it as it can’t be that hard to get a more up to date one and diagnosis is not relevant to PIP entitlement. On the other hand if a client presents me with a 15 year old sight registration for a lifelong condition I’d use it every time. It wouldn’t in any sense be pivotal but it is relevant.

Finding your threads where this was “done to death” is easy enough. Just click on your name and you’ll see options to view everything you’ve replied to and every discussion you’ve started. Last I looked there were about 10 on the topic of your claim so it shouldn’t be hard to locate. You have examined the one issue - your entitlement - from multiple angles but seem determined to not entertain the possibility of nil entitlement, preferring instead to pivot towards a slightly new angle each time. 

As regards not putting medical notes in because they were out-dated, it will vary from case to case but in most cases it’s a sensible, reasoned decision. As a example, if you need a 20 year old report to prove a current diagnosis and that’s all you have then your claim is in trouble from the off. 

Equally a 20 year old report would also say zilch about your functional abilities on the date of claim. It’s incomprehensible to me that anyone could think such stuff relevant.

There is a growing body of case law on the need to put DLA evidence into appeal papers. The consensus has moved on apace from “if you ask they must put it in” to “there are a limited number of bodily functions for DLA where the wording has sufficient overlap with PIP to make it relevant but, in most cases, it’s hard to justify it as a sensible use of public money.” 

Bottom line? If the gist of your case is that you ought to get PIP because you got DLA then you’ve misunderstood what it is you’re trying to do and how to do it. If the gist is that your DLA claim contains your best medical evidence then you’ve not built the most basic of cases. For all that I’ve had clients who request their DLA evidence and were upset when it wasn’t included I’ll be damned if I can think of a case where it mattered bar maybe one. Even in that one case we went ahead without it and won inside 15 minutes. If you want PIP then use current medical evidence if needed at all and construct a case around strong anecdotal evidence. 

I note that you “don’t care to hear an opinion” as regards why a judge described medical notes as of ”cardinal importance” but that strikes me as hugely problematic. Would you seek representation; tell the rep that you just want them to rep and aren’t interested in their view of your case and then complain that they didn’t tell you that you could lose? It’s a selective disregard of what’s relevant to your case and why the conclusion, which you clearly dislike, may have been eminently reasonable.

So, whilst you might not see it as relevant, I think it will be of interest to others to understand why a judges conclusion may not be relevant or binding.

Firstly, you’re absolutely right. It’s not unique. Many judges adjourn hearings in order to obtain medical evidence. However, you have to look at why they do that and what happens next. Most appellants want to believe that a judge is adjourning for medical evidence because they think it’s relevant. Occasionally that is true. More often 

- the judge or another panel member wants to get home or out. 
- the judge is sitting with panel members who don’t at any point want to give you a fair hearing so they adjourn to give you a different panel.
- the panel think you have presented no case for entitlement but think you’ll kick off when they say that so they kick it down the road and let another panel site it out.

However, the key issue is what happens next. The next tribunal is a fresh hearing and is in no way bound by the findings of a previous hearing. A judge can thus use a phrase like “cardinal importance” knowing full well it has no consequences for them and the DWP are free to ignore it completely. The next tribunal could use those words as a stick to beat the DWP with if they wished but the easier option is always to look at it and say “do we actually have enough evidence to decide the case one way or another” and if they do then they just crack on and don’t worry about what’s missing.

It is thus absolutely not the case that such words contradict in any way the views of many on here that medical evidence is, with a couple of exceptions, not where the focus of a claim should be. They could just as easily be read as judicial laziness as they could a measure of the weight to be given to medical evidence.

As regards the specifics of your case, which as ever remain largely elusive, I am struggling to think for the life of me why DLA “notes” whatever those are which predate a PIP claim by a mere 3 months could be of any relevance. What could they possibly say or reveal which wasn’t in the PIP claim pack?

It does strike me that DWP refusing to include them looks from the outside a tad harsh but on the other hand what could their value be? Equally if one were the DWP or a tribunal it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask why a copy hasn’t been retained if it was known such evidence was pivotal and presumably unique. I’m no fan of DWP else I wouldn’t do what I do but it’s genuinely hard to see what they’ve done wrong here.

I think you may benefit from reading through all your threads on this claim and asking yourself what the benefit of this micro analysis of one small aspect of your PIP claim has been. I choose to respond nowadays to threads only where I think there may be a wider benefit to others but in your specific case I’d love to know what these “DLA notes” contained that would have changed your outcome. 

tru88le

I should add that if your correct the dwp did nothing wrong then the decision wouldnt have been set aside.

mikehughescq

As ever you're confusing multiple issues. My understanding is that you've won at UT and will now be returned to FTT. 

That win simply shows that the FTT erred in law. That, as I frequently observe on here, is not rare. It does not usually mean the original FTT were factually wrong and is also not indicative at all of likely chances of success at any subsequent FTT.

(Removed by moderator, inappropriate comment)

calcotti

tru88le said:

I should add that if your correct the dwp did nothing wrong then the decision wouldnt have been set aside.

Surely the UT sets a decision aside if the FTT tribunal has erred in law, not because of something DWP have done.

mikehughescq

calcotti said:

tru88le said:

I should add that if your correct the dwp did nothing wrong then the decision wouldnt have been set aside.

Surely the UT sets a decision aside if the FTT tribunal has erred in law, not because of something DWP have done.

Quite. 

I once inherited a client who won three times at UT and simply couldn’t get to grips with the fact that it said nothing about the accuracy of the decision under appeal. They lost 4 FTTs before I came along and explained what no-one had ever bothered to explained to them at the outset. They simply didn’t come near to qualifying for what was then DLA for adults. No amount of errors of law in a tribunals decision at any level would ever change that. 

A win at UT doesn’t even really say that the FTT erred in law. What it really says is that a statement of reasons, which is constructed only on request post tribunal from the judges handwritten record and memory of the case, was flawed. I’ve seen UTs overturn FTT decisions with massively detailed explanations when it was fairly obvious that the real issue was that in the face of doing many sessions the FTT judge had simply not made good enough notes and had forgotten some of the detail. 

calcotti

mikehughescq said:... the FTT judge had simply not made good enough notes and had forgotten some of the detail. 

I have trouble writing a meeting minute more than 24 hours after a meeting. I can’t imagine trying to deal with a request to do so up to a month afterwards!

mikehughescq

Indeed. Even if a claimant puts in a request for an SOR/ROP immediately the reality is that the clerks can take two months to get it out to a judges home address and that judge might then be ill; have caring or child care issues and so on so some requests aren’t being actioned for many months. The whole thing is inevitably far from perfect. Not sure most claimants even realise that fee paid judges have so little work many have had to take second jobs and simply don’t have the time to write decisions let alone think about them properly. 

tru88le

I dont know why you see some mystery in the dla notes as I mentiondd them only  in terms of my medical notes and their being relevant about 8 weeks earlier for my dla claim which was renewed indefinitely.
Then being outdated for pip.
I considet the judge saying they were of cardinal importance to be a better indicator than what a group of people here believe. Belief isnt always basrd on fact.

tru88le

calcotti said:

tru88le said:

I should add that if your correct the dwp did nothing wrong then the decision wouldnt have been set aside.

Surely the UT sets a decision aside if the FTT tribunal has erred in law, not because of something DWP have done.

You could call it a knock on effect, they (dwp) excluded evidence which at the hearing served to make me appear unprepared  and as the judge said not much chance of success... (that was the warning) so he adjourned, at the next hearing the judge didnt know what the first judge gave the warning for so proceeded on dodgy grounds and me with more but not much more evidence. Plus some written statements from nurses. with little tangible proof to back up my appeal.
As people on here, whom mikehughes mentions like to consider the omission of medical evidence as of minor importance to the hearing.
I would be interested to know if they would considet claiming pip without any medical evidence? [Removed by moderator - please watch your tone]
Well what if the medical evidence you supplied was removed, would you still feel confident? And if you lost the appeal and then found out your medical submissions had been quietly removed before the hearing would you still feel that the omission of your notes had little bearing on the decision?
[removed by moderator - please watch your tone]

[Removed by moderator - personal attack].
I dont get your assertion that a judge being so underworked he has no time to write reports or think about them. Presume you mean ftt judges.
You also state that any errors found are found in the judges sor. There are other areas errors can be caused.
[Removed by moderator - personal attacks. Please watch your tone, and avoid profanity]

You seem to think i'm under a delusion that i should be winning and its all so unfair.
The reality is when a rep or tribunal sees the full story and still says i should withdraw the appeal i would do.
Consider your own example would you have considered telling that person they had no chance even after several hearings without seeing the medical history? [Removed by moderator - please watch your tone]. Obviously it was that evidence that formed your opinion so why tell them to quit if its not that important?
What drives me on is knowing it hasnt been considered with full evidence yet.
The dwp gave me10 points the tribunal 0 points.
Does that not indicate anything about what effect the lack of medical data had?

[General note from moderator - please watch your tone @tru88le. We don't tolerate personal attacks against other memebrs.]

mikehughescq

The number of people who successfully claim PIP without supporting medical evidence is around 52% so it’s hardly a big deal to consider doing so. I do this work 5 days a week and I’m genuinely struggling to remember the last case I had which needed medical evidence. It has been literally years. 

I was very clear in my previous comment that I was referring to part-time judges. Thus why i used the phrase “fee paid”. Full time judges are salaried. Fee paid judges are not in huge demand at present. Most get maybe 2 sessions a month. That wouldn’t get them a 4 figure monthly income thus many are working as locum solicitors etc. 

I’m not sure most people understand what goes into 1 day of doing tribunals. The panel would get the papers and need to preview them at home. It usually takes 1/2 day to 1 day to do that and it is unpaid work. If you do a days worth of hearings you will get at least 2 statement requests. Yes, those attract a payment but they also take at least a day each to do and the pay is a lump sum paid at half the rate for a day of hearings no matter how long it takes you. Roughly speaking then a fee paid tribunal judge does 4 days work for 1.5 days pay. Now, if they only get 2 days a month that’s still the best part of 2 weeks per month gone for likely £1,200 take home. As that’s currently unlikely to pay the mortgage, and let’s not forget some fee paid members can literally go months with no work at all, they take second jobs. How do you fit in a second job which requires you to be present 4 to 6 days per week when you’re a fee paid judge? Simple. The requests for statements of reasons simply have to wait. I hope that explains my “assertion” in full.

In turn, your suggestion that errors of law can be found somewhere other than the statement of reasons is simply wrong.The only basis for going to UT is an error of law. The SOR and record of proceedings (ROP) are the only documents considered when a judge decides whether or not there is the appearance of an error of law. 

Medical history, as has been pointed out to you repeatedly over several threads, is rarely relevant to a PIP claim. Provided your symptoms are accepted as real there is no need for even a diagnosis. All that matters is that your symptoms are accepted as real and that you demonstrate through anecdote how they impact your reliability at performing the relevant points scoring activities. 

I note your comment that DWP awarded 10 points but a tribunal awarded zero points. You suggest that says something about the lack of “medical data”. What that suggests to me is as follows:

- whilst a FTT is a complete re-hearing and you walk in with zero points, most FTTs don’t tend to want to reinvent the wheel. If they can see why you had those points from the papers and especially from your verbal evidence on the day then they’ll move quickly to the points you don’t have and save everyone a lot of time. You managed to lose the 10 points you had. As an experienced rep I cannot for the life of me imagine how the absence of medical evidence would do that if you were present in the hearing and were able to given straightforward, credible answers. The absence of anecdotal evidence can be fatal thus why the success rate at paper hearings is so low i.e. the lack of real world examples, but, the lack of medical evidence? I would genuinely love an explanation of exactly what damage it could have done if you were there to give evidence anyway. 
- it’s a relatively straightforward matter to get a FTT set aside if relevant documents were missing. You didn’t manage to do that and ended up at UT and are now heading to what sounds like a 3rd FTT.

You say that if a rep told you that you weren’t entitled you would cease immediately. Your case is screaming out that you are in need of representation.

Scope - I did not see the original unmoderated post (quite literally and most amusingly too busy closing cases where I have successfully obtained PIP for people without the help of any medical evidence) - so I’ve no idea at whom any moderated comments were aimed. However, I cannot imagine a finer example of poor moderation. You are literally at the stage where someone can breach your T&Cs 5x in 1 post and you bend over backwards to allow the post to appear rather than just removing the post in its entirety and contacting the poster to explain why. Words fail. They really do. Such actions actively encourage personal abuse. What exactly was achieved by allowing the post? You would achieve 10x more and make yours and our lives on here far easier by simply banning abuse. 

Ross_Scope

Hi @mikehughescq

Thanks for your reply, I hope you are getting along okay.

It's important for us to allow open discussion on the community, in this case @tru88le has thoughts on the subject and they deserve to have their say, just like anybody else does. A constructive conversation was, and still very much is, possible.

We do prevent many comments from appearing publicly on the community, however in some cases it works better from a moderation standpoint to make edits to posts and allow what remains to appear on the community if it makes sense and contributes to the discussion. 

Having said that, just because a comment is permitted for public view with edits, this doesn't mean we don't proceed to follow our disciplinary procedures privately with any involved individuals. Abuse of any kind is not accepted on the community and in this instance any comments seen to have been in breach of our community guidelines were removed and addressed.

tru88le

<moderator removed – comments made against community guidelines.  Please remember to not comment on another member’s character and keep on topic>

@Mikehughescq Thanks for replying but you are asking me the same question i am asking you about what the removal of medical notes could possibly do to my chances of winning the appeal.
You cant remember a case whdre medical records even mattered?
Come on, as you say yourself your left to convince them tbe illness real anr that shouldnt need to be said at this stage. If i cant convince them i have an illness i am scuppered that is the relevance of my medical notes i cant or might not be able to convince them i have an illness as welk as they would like and its all time wasted about how it affects me not wether i even have an illness.
If what you say is true there would be no need to provide any medical notes at all at any stage if it was a matter of simply tellling them i had a diagnosis. The lack 9f medical data causes someone who cannot explain very well to have no back up and they will fail.
I know the judge didnt believe much i said, i came across badly i wrecked my own appeal, i can accept my errors asi have some humility <moderator removed – comments made against community guidelines. Please remember to not comment on another member’s character and keep on topic>

But i am certain i would have fared better had my notes not been omitted.
<moderator removed – comments made against community guidelines. Please remember to not comment on another member’s character and keep on topic>
I dont agree that anecdotal evidence counts for as much as you say and i have seen for myself the dwp dismiss anecdotal evidence but it seems any oral replies are inevitably anecdotal, when talking about experiences and issues.
My point yet again was that the dwp awarded 10 points which the tribunal removed. I see that as illogically different in their assessment of points and i could only see the lack of medical notes as the cause.
Think about it, why would they give me a warning about my chances of success before i even say a word? That must mean that something  is affecting my case and it cannot be anything i've said!
It can only be a lack of medical back up, simple proof of the illness that verifies the condition and then they can ask away but without it they are forced to focus on wether you even have an illness first.
I'm not unwilling to accept your advice but i cant do that unless it is relating to the question i ask.
Also regarding what my rep said i know they made their opinion on an incomplete tribunal bundle and i only said i would heed their advice if it was given in light 9f seeing the full bundle. Until that point how can they advise without the full facts? Also my knowing they havent seen all tbe evidence causes me to not heed their advice because I know its based on only partial knowledge of the facts.
I simply said i WOULD HEED THEM IF I KNEW THEY HAD ALL THE FACTS.
<moderator removed – comments made against community guidelines.  Please remember to not comment on another member’s character and keep on topic> 

Cher_Inactive

@Tru88le Thank you for your post.  It has been heavily edited to remove all instances whereby the community guidelines have been breached.  We understand the subject of PIP can give rise to heated emotion and debate, however personal attacks against other members will not be tolerated.  Should any future posts you make contain similar non-permitted content, they will result in appropriate disciplinary action.  To avoid this, please remember to keep conversation based around the subject matter and not the character of a person who may disagree.  Thank you. 

mikehughescq

Ross_Scope said:

Hi @mikehughescq

It's important for us to allow open discussion on the community, in this case @tru88le has thoughts on the subject and they deserve to have their say, just like anybody else does. A constructive conversation was, and still very much is, possible.

We do prevent many comments from appearing publicly on the community, however in some cases it works better from a moderation standpoint to make edits to posts and allow what remains to appear on the community if it makes sense and contributes to the discussion. 

Having said that, just because a comment is permitted for public view with edits, this doesn't mean we don't proceed to follow our disciplinary procedures privately with any involved individuals. Abuse of any kind is not accepted on the community and in this instance any comments seen to have been in breach of our community guidelines were removed and addressed.

Cher_Scope said:

@Tru88le Thank you for your post.  It has been heavily edited to remove all instances whereby the community guidelines have been breached.  We understand the subject of PIP can give rise to heated emotion and debate, however personal attacks against other members will not be tolerated.  Should any future posts you make contain similar non-permitted content, they will result in appropriate disciplinary action.  To avoid this, please remember to keep conversation based around the subject matter and not the character of a person who may disagree.  Thank you. 

And here we have the problem in a nutshell Scope. 5 acts of moderation in the last but one post and the impact of that was... another post requiring 4 acts of moderation. Whatever you’re doing publicly and in the background isn’t working is it!

I think it’s time for the community to stand up as a whole now and tell you unequivocally that your moderation policy is simply wrong. The “open discussion” argument is the same nonsense Facebook peddles when allowing abuse. The “deserving to have their say” approach is the same thing. A “constructive conversation” is not possible where abuse continues and editing that, as can be seen here, offers no disincentives to abuse at all.

The post from @Cher_Scope suggests that no other action was taken after the last but one post. This simply doesn’t happen on any other forums. This approach certainly doesn’t happen on any other forums involving disabled people. Scope are effectively taking a stance which says that all disability allows abuse provided that some sensible comment goes along with that. Frankly, it is transparently abject nonsense. 

I am but one poster here but I’m calling it out now. Poppy has stepped back. Chiariads has stepped back. In both instances that has been down to your moderation policy. Time to grow some; take a long look in the mirror and close the forum whilst you review just how far wrong you have gone here. 

For the avoidance of any doubt I very quietly decided I too would be leaving a few weeks back and requested my account should be deleted. I was asked by Adrian to remain and invited to take part in exactly such a review. I asked some simple questions and agreed to stay until I at least received answers and could form an informed view about that. I have received nothing. I now consider it nothing more than a con. A way of avoiding another embarrassing departure. 

For the further avoidance of doubt, as of now I am taking a stand and I ask other posters to join me. If a post is allowed to appear which contained abuse then I simply won’t respond. End of. I’m not interested in the extent of editing or what goes on behind the scenes. Such posts should not be “edited”. They need to be removed and the poster suspended. Zero tolerance rather than tolerance of literally everything, Your moderation is fundamentally broken. You as an organisation are now enablers of abuse and you need to be publicly called out on that. 

@Tru88le does not deserve a response at all. They have posted repeated abuse. I will not be responding. 

Cher_Inactive

@mikehughescq  I'm sorry but the inference that action wasn't taken where a member broke the community guidelines isn't found on evidence.  Where members breach the community guidelines, action is taken but kept private for confidentiality reasons.

Also, Adrian has been on annual leave the past week.  I will flag up that you are awaiting a response regarding the review and also feed on the concerns you raise regarding moderation.  

mikehughescq

At this stage @Cher_Scope it no longer matters. The point is that your moderation is wholly broken when you allow abusive posters to persist and I will simply not accept that. It doesn’t happen anywhere else on the net bar the idiocy of Facebook and Twitter and your organisations seems deaf to the overwhelming criticisms of their approach and only to happy to adopt it as your own. As an organisation you are not enabling disabled people. You are enabling abuse and I for one am not going to tolerate it any more. No-one should have to.