PIP Tribunal Query

sunshine88

Hi everyone, 

I have my PIP tribunal this week. I first applied about 1.5 years ago and my health has got worse since then. I’ve also had some new diagnoses that I didn’t have at the time of the assessment, which I’ve submitted evidence of along with scans and test results etc, but I’m worried I’ve done the wrong thing by saying that as the PIP department have commented on my evidence being ‘irrelevant’ because I didn’t mention it at assessment (because I was still under investigations at that time). 

I wondered if anyone could confirm if the purpose of the tribunal is to prove that the assessor was wrong at the time they completed my assessment, or is it to just chat through my current health with the tribunal panel? 

I’m already worried enough about the tribunal but now I’m concerned I’ve messed up my chances by saying that I’ve worsened etc (although even at the time of the assessment my health was still bad enough to meet a lot of the requirements that the assessor didn’t mark down). I’d be really grateful for any advice. 

Thank you! 

calcotti

The purpose of the tribunal is to make a determination of your entitlement to PIP at the time of the original assessment.

The award of PIP is about how your health impacts you and not about diagnosis.

mikehughescq

The tribunal look at how you were when you applied and thus have no interest in how you’ve been since as long as any issues you have continued for at least 9 months forward. 

Their role is to weigh all the evidence; decide what they believe on balance to be the facts and then apply the law to the facts they have found. 

The tribunal is not about the HCP report. It will largely disregard that (and so should you) and be mostly be interested in your verbal evidence about those points scoring activities you cannot perform reliably. 

Any undiagnosed symptoms at the date of claim are relevant if they contributed to your impairment at that time. Any subsequent deterioration is not relevant because they’re looking only at how you were when you claimed. Pushing the idea you’ve got worse is what many claimants do thinking it will somehow be persuasive whereas it tends to entrench the DWP with a view that, if you’ve got worse, you should abandon your appeal and make a new claim. Very rarely what you actually need to do.

Tori_Scope

Welcome to the community @sunshine88 Have the comments above helped to clear this up for you?