Pip and ESA face to face assessments to resume in may

buddy85

Just been reading this and simply cant believe the DWP are asking people who were declared clinically extremely vulnerable to attend face to face appointments 

Adrian_Scope

I think there’s going to be a lot of people feeling the same way @buddy85, although I can understand the need for them to restart for those who haven’t been able to been assessed by other means. 

But I do have some reservations about it too. 

For anyone interested in reading more or discussing face-to-face assessments restarting from May [edited for correction], I’ve put a bit more information about them and started a discussion here. 

calcotti

To be clear 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/face-to-face-assessments-to-resume-for-health-and-disability-benefits?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_source=75f28f2c-87aa-4520-ba62-1eafa32d8e0f&utm_content=immediately

Face-to-face assessments for Work Capability Assessments (WCAs) (for claims for the additional health amount of Universal Credit and Employment and Support Allowance) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP), will resume from May. Initially, this will only be for those who we are unable to fully assess by other channels.
People will be invited for their appointments by letter, which will clearly set out what to expect at their appointment.
Face-to-face assessments will take place alongside existing paper-based assessments, and telephone assessments (for WCAs and PIP), which will continue to take place where suitable.

The positive is that this gives the opportunity for those who have been told they cannot get their claims processed without a F2F to get their claims progressed.

Only time will tell how this impacts but, on this basis, we are not, for the time being at least, returning to F2F being the default method of assessment.