Discrepancy between DWP notes and support worker

anxiousbird · September 23

Hi again
so a bit of background: I’m currently waiting for my tribunal in mid November. DWP offered standard mobility and said that I needed to reply by 31st august. I said to my welfare rights officer that I wanted to accept the offer and will then appeal again for enhanced. I didn’t receive any reply from the WRO so I asked him again whether he had relayed my acceptance of offer to DWP but he said he didn’t (and it was now past 31st august). I thought he must have been busy n didn’t get time to reply to the offer for me. However, I’ve received DWP’s letter through the tribunal and it mentions how my WRO declined the offer via phone and also some other conversation that went on between my WRO and DWP representative during that phone call (DWP saying that the claimant needed to respond to offer themselves n WRO saying that he’s acting on my behalf so his word should be taken). After receiving this, I emailed my WRO again to ask about that but it’s been over 2 weeks and he hasn’t replied back. I’m just so confused and also worried. Did the WRO really decline the offer even though I told him to accept the offer - and on top of that, when I asked whether he had called DWP to respond to my offer he said no? 😕 Or do you think DWP is lying about this?

calcotti · September 24

This is something you need to discuss with your WRO.

anxiousbird · September 24

calcotti said:

This is something you need to discuss with your WRO.

I did send him an email two weeks ago but haven’t got any response from him

poppy123456 · September 24

We can't answer your questions, everything we say will only be a guess.

mikehughescq · September 24

Educated guess would be that your WRO declined the offer or that DWP put that as a proxy for “tried the WRO once and they didn’t answer”. Bottom line? Only your WRO will know what they did.

I understand the anxiety but I also totally get any WRO not answering immediately at present. Whilst lots of people are trying to pretend a pandemic away the reality for advice services is that many staff are still working from home; many services are not in a position to see people and caseloads are up between 70 and 80% but often more. The reality of that is that deadline driven stuff takes priority. Either the stuff where someone has no money at all or the stuff where, if you miss a deadline, you can be sued. I recently took 15 days to answer a call and whilst that is a long way from ideal the only way I could have changed that for the better would be to work about 9pm or later each night.

The real facts of this will come out at tribunal. In the meantime you need to take these concerns to your WRO and be patient.

anxiousbird · September 24

Thanks Mike and Poppy

yes I do understand that my WRO might just be really busy. I do hope that it is cleared up soon; feeling so anxious thinking about the ‘what ifs’ 🙈

mikehughescq · September 24

There is no "might be" here. Advice services have been swamped during this pandemic and that remains the case and, frankly, may well get worse before it gets better.

Discrepancy between DWP notes and support worker

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