I got 0 points from a PIP telephone assessment

richiehep · May 2020

Just had a telephone assesment for pip and got the decision today 0 zilch nothing I have worked on the buildings for nearly 40 years hence my copd and silica on my lungs lost my parents within 2 years and then my best friend my dog off 12 years oh and my license and job because of my apnia just don't get why people need to lie

chiarieds · May 2020

Hi @richiehep - Welcome to the community, & thank you for joining. I'm so sorry to read about your PIP decision, which has followed so many tragic events over the past few years. Sadly you're not the only one that has had a poor decision, as many people have joined the community over this. I'll try & help if I can, so that you can move forward over this at least.

You have one month from the date of your decision letter in which you can ask for a Mandatory Reconsideration (MR). This is best done by letter, putting your name & NI number on each page. This will then be looked at by another DWP Decision Maker. There's info about this at the end of your decision letter.

PIP is not about any diagnoses (as people with the same diagnoses will all be differently affected), rather it's about how your disability affects your daily living &/mobility.

An understanding of the activities/descriptors that are looked at to gain any points will be helpful. Please see: https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/asset-library/Scores-for-PIP-Descriptors-2020.pdf

For each descriptor that applies to you, give a couple of examples about the difficulties you face attempting, or doing each. This should be as detailed as possible. Say when it's difficult, how often, in what way, does it make you breathless, or feel exhausted afterwards, does it cause pain, can you do it safely, can you repeat the activity as often as you'd like, does it take you longer than someone without your disability? Whatever is relevant to you.

So 2 real-life examples for each applicable descriptor are needed.

All that being said, unfortunately the success rate of MRs is poor; less than 1 in 5 decisions change. However, if the decision is still not favourable, you can then appeal to a tribunal. This is independent of the DWP, & mainly currently done by phone (tho some decisions are made as they feel they have all the info they need, i.e. a 'paper assessment' ). The success rate of tribunals has improved during the Coronavirus outbreak. So an MR is just a necessary stage to go through, but the info you put into this would be looked at by the tribunal, so it's definitely worth doing.

I hope this helps, but please, if you have any questions, do say. Please also know we will all support you along the way. My best wishes.

Ails · May 2020

Hi @richiehep and welcome to the Community. It's nice to meet you. I'm very sorry to hear about your losses and also about your PIP decision. It sounds as though you have went through a very difficult time lately. I hope you have found @chiareds advice/information about PIP above to be helpful and this will be useful in helping you to reach a decision as to your next step in this process. I do wish you well with all of this and understand that you must feel really disheartened at the moment, but I wish you well in whatever you decided and please stay in touch and let us know how things go. We are all here to support you on the forum so please chat to us if you need us anytime. I wish you all the best.

I got 0 points from a PIP telephone assessment

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