Pip flawed complaints procedure

tru88le

I wonder if anyone is aware of a trick the DWP are using to interfere with the progression of complaints...
When tak8ng a complaint further such as to the ombudsman which needs the support of your MP to do and they also have to sign the complaint themselves that they support your complaint.
The involvement of the ombudsman is the first point that your complaint is handled by anyone other than the DWP, up to thos point its all in their hands.
The problem I have discovered is that even with all in place and a signed letter from your MP the DWP have to respond to your complaint for the ombudsman to consider it.
So as long as the DWP don't respond to the complaint it can go nowhere!
Basically this enables them to hinder more serious complaints simply by ignoring them.
Seems very unfair that they can manipulate the complaints system like this and people waiting for DWP responses might as well know their wait is a deliberate tactic. 

Sue_Alumni

Hi @ tru88le 

I don’t think it is quite right to say that the Ombudsman is the first point at which a complaint is looked at by someone outside the DWP.  The stated objective of The Independent Case Examiner is to act as an independent adjudicator in cases where a DWP customer feels they have not been treated fairly.  There are certainly long delays in the complaints process but as far as I understand it there is no firm evidence that there is any deliberate policy by the DWP to exploit this.

Sue_Alumni

OK thank you both for explaining.

I'm trying to think what remedies you may have and I'm tagging  @calcotti in the hope that he will  give the benefit of his experience.  It you feel that the first tier tribunal did not take into account your health  conditions prior to the health assessment you may possibly have grounds to request leave to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. In order to request leave to appeal to the Upper Tribunal you must show that the lower tribunal has made an error in law. To evidence this you will need to obtain a Statement of Reasons of the Tribunal's decision.  The tribunals statement of reasons must set out clearly what it decided and why.  A statement of Reasons must be requested within one month of the tribunal decision.   If the Tribunal decision was this month you still have time to request a statement of reasons but you should not delay.  I  would suggest that you get help from your local Citizens Advice to advise whether you may have a case for saying you had  LCWRA during the period you refer.  They will be able to discuss the LCWRA descriptors with you. They will be able to go through the tribunal's Statement of Reasons with you. 
  
Unless you have a decision that you had an entitlement to LCWRA at some point I don't think you can argue that you have lost that entitlement.   

You may still have grounds to make a complaint for the way the DWP handled your claim and, in particular, the delay in getting the assessment.   

  

tru88le

Thanks for that, the problem is that even with your MP's support for your complaint the dwp can stall the complaint process by simply not responding to you.
To escalate a complaint beyond the control and manipulation of the dwp, which is the stage where the  Ombudsman decides,  this requires your complaint to be actually signed by your MP, you still have to get a response to your complaint from the dwp!
 By stalling they prevent you from progressing the complaint beyond their grasp even with your MP fully endorsing and actually signing it.
Wonder what they are scared of? Maybe its because the Ombudsman can award serious compensation...

tru88le

You also have to go through the dwp to reach the companies you mention as they deal with dwp who is their client and you sadly are a dwp client.

tru88le

Biblioklept said:

I thought with most complaints you just had to have tried to resolve it with them first before escalating?? 
I know the DWP gets a time frame to respond to complaint but I don't think they can just ignore it, surely??

They can ignore it as long as they like and they do, the timeframes are just irrelevant, one i'm aware of is 3 times the timeframe with n9 response even with aan MP on board.
Ultimately what can you do if they dont stick to their rules? Complain again?

Sue_Alumni

I am not defending the DWP but I don't think it  correct that you have to go through the DWP to complain about the Assessment providers.  The assessment report from Maximus should give details how to make a complaint. 

poppy123456

Sue_Scope said:

I am not defending the DWP but I don't think it  correct that you have to go through the DWP to complain about the Assessment providers.  The assessment report from Maximus should give details how to make a complaint. 

You are correct. For complaints about the assessmen providers you need to contact them, details how to do this is on their website.

tru88le

Considering the  process, the assessor makes a decision passes it to dwp who then act on it, you get the dwp decision based on that report and disagree with the assessment/assessor and decide to complain to the assessor providers, which is a pointless exercise really as its already too late.Sue_Alumni said:

Hi @ tru88le 

I don’t think it is quite right to say that the Ombudsman is the first point at which a complaint is looked at by someone outside the DWP.  The stated objective of The Independent Case Examiner is to act as an independent adjudicator in cases where a DWP customer feels they have not been treated fairly.  There are certainly long delays in the complaints process but as far as I understand it there is no firm evidence that there is any deliberate policy by the DWP to exploit this.

No firm evidence of deliberate delays, actually no evidence at all obviously this would never be policy, I meant it was a tactic available and the independant case examiner is formed mainly of dwp staff.
As the ICE themselves put it "when we receive a complaint about us..." that doesnt sound very independant to me, but very much still in dwp hands.
In my experience ICE did not as expected fulfill their timescale promises either and didnt respond within 3 weeks or in fact at all.
Its just another example of people blindly  believing such procedures have any real life validity without actually ever using them  or directing others to use  such procedures 
Without any knowledge that it will work  or fullfill its obligations.
I suppise this is because the people who's job is to help people with such matters have no experience of the realities of using such a system themselves.
An adviser pointing someone to the ICE service might believe they are helping but anyone telling someone to use the ICE  who has actually used the service themselves will know they are really sending so.eone on a fools errand and that the end result will be to provide the Ombudsman with even more evidence of how the dwp including ICE now, have failed to meet deadlines. ICE then is just the final hurdle of time wasting before you can complain outside of the dwp. 

Further While your complaining to the provider using the procedure you suggested that is going to make zero diference to the dwp process that the report initiated and therefore no difference to  your pip claim.
In other words by the time you see the assessment its too late for any compaint about the assessment to have any effect and even if they agreed with you its a matter of closing the barn door...
Anyone can point someone toward official complaint channels  but only those paid to offer such advice would  consider it to be an actual solution.