Attn : rogerblack, and others

tokenfield

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

More than 1.2 million cases involving claims for disability and unemployment allowances have been taken to the special tribunals since April 2010, latest Ministry of Justice data reveals.

With each case costing an average £377 to process, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the bill has been £475million.

Rising unemployment, a large backlog and confusion over welfare reforms and controversial work capability assessments mean that the figure is forecast to hit nearly £1billion by the end of this Parliament in 2015. The numbers were compiled by researchers at ilegal, the internet forum for law specialists.

Worried campaigners paint a picture of chaos with tribunal judges bogged down by paperwork while welfare claimants are frequently having to suffer long waits for justice.

Court buildings previously earmarked for partial closure under the Government’s cost-cutting programme have had to be reopened to house the tribunals due to lack of space elsewhere.

I would agree - it has got out of hand. Fortunately, whilst the MOJ bill the DWP for this cost, it does not feature in the line up of what is included in the Welfare budget.

As long as the top line isn't breached everyone is happy. That is unless you are a claimant. As the DWP management costs soar there is only one place for the actual welfare payments to go - downwards to compensate!

The moral of story is that claimants should look to themselves for this increase in overheads - if less appeals were made, there may not need to be the level of Welfare cuts that we are seeing. Claimant's only have themselves to blame. More appeals = increased costs = reduction of available funds for Welfare payments.

rogerblack

tokenfield wrote: »

The moral of story is that claimants should look to themselves for this increase in overheads - if less appeals were made, there may not need to be the level of Welfare cuts that we are seeing. Claimant's only have themselves to blame. More appeals = increased costs = reduction of available funds for Welfare payments.

Err - no.
The moral of the story is that the DWP should put more effort into making the right decision first time.
Decisionmakers for ESA, for example, have typically half an hour per file.
A substantial fraction of the above bill would be reduced by them spending more time investigating, and personalising the response so that claimants understand why they are not getting benefit.
Perhaps even actually calling them more often!

As it is - the decisionmakers manager seems to be rewarded for getting decisions made in 28 minutes, not 31, and does not take into account the extra cost to the public purse due to these inaccurate decisions which lead to lengthy periods on appeal before a hearing.

If the government was acting sanely, they would look at the £327 appeal cost, and realise that it's dwarfed in many cases by the amount paid while the claimant is on appeal. Halving the time to appeal would save _lots_ of money.

schrodie

David Fraud gave this answer regarding appeals against work capability assessments undertaken by Atos.

Here

Richie-from-the-Boro

tokenfield wrote: »

I would agree - it has got out of hand. Fortunately, whilst the MOJ bill the DWP for this cost, it does not feature in the line up of what is included in the Welfare budget.

As long as the top line isn't breached everyone is happy. That is unless you are a claimant. As the DWP management costs soar there is only one place for the actual welfare payments to go - downwards to compensate!

The moral of story is that claimants should look to themselves for this increase in overheads - if less appeals were made, there may not need to be the level of Welfare cuts that we are seeing. Claimant's only have themselves to blame. More appeals = increased costs = reduction of available funds for Welfare payments.

No, more, hopefully many many more, closer to 100% of individuals should all appeal, that would be 40% wrong decisions of a much greater number of claimants. Its their right, their legal right to justice in law constantly undermined everyone should exercise their right to access to and protection of the law.

It gets sneakier the wonderful new 'mandatory reconsideration before appeal' scheme has hidden issues, what the DWP have not told you is that ESA individuals who are in the 'wait' phase of the re-appeal scrutiny to have their cases reassessed will have to go on JSA while they wait for the DWP's decision.

The DWP is "a serial litigant their cases clog up the legal system in astonishing and increasing number, producing about 265,000 final hearings last year alone".

From Oct then the DWP is going to wipe out the 40% bad decision making with their new attention on 'getting it right first time' instead of the second or third time by in the DWP's own words "making sure only appropriate appeals would reach the tribunal"

- did you see that folks ?
- did you ?

Ok ! for those that missed it appropriate would be because the claimant did something wrong, paperwork, dates, signatures, evidence etc .. .. so its all the soddin claimants fault [the nudge unit in No10 (pic below) spreading inference] for appealing in the first place. In the recent years had about an 80% chance of a win at appeal before the GOV sacked most of the CAB funding for full time welfare representation, the current ESA success rate of about 42% is still indicative of a useless system with badly prepared cases and poor due diligence in the first place.



Now as for 'badly prepared cases and poor due diligence', a large number of cases were never really prepared in the first place, and had poor or no due diligence, I'd say about almost exactly ..................... 42% had badly prepared cases and poor due diligence. Put another way the DM rubber stamps almost all of ATOS decisions and 42% of ATOS decisions were wrong in that first place.

DWP's figures show by 12th August last year :

- 1.6 million [new] ESA-WCA's completed
- recorded reconsiderations were tiny - 73,300 put into WRAG
- 890,300 'fit for work' decisions

Lets see if the 'reconsideration' pre-appeal figue moves from 70k [ish] over the next year and the ESA appeal level drops from 42%.

The MoJ and the DWP will want to keep the costings quiet, chew you way through these and its looking close to a half bi££ion pounds of taxpayers money. Now if ever a reason was needed to get the ATOS assessments right in the first place and to clamp down on the DWP's DM rubber stamping the WCA's there are a half billion good reasons for starters. Take note GOV.

Note : Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team or nudge unit !

Brassedoff

tokenfield wrote: »

I would agree - it has got out of hand. Fortunately, whilst the MOJ bill the DWP for this cost, it does not feature in the line up of what is included in the Welfare budget.

As long as the top line isn't breached everyone is happy. That is unless you are a claimant. As the DWP management costs soar there is only one place for the actual welfare payments to go - downwards to compensate!

The moral of story is that claimants should look to themselves for this increase in overheads - if less appeals were made, there may not need to be the level of Welfare cuts that we are seeing. Claimant's only have themselves to blame. More appeals = increased costs = reduction of available funds for Welfare payments.

Are you nutz? :wall:

headcone

Brassedoff wrote: »

Are you nutz? :wall:

No he`s Andy.

Richie-from-the-Boro

ATOS has been told to immediately enact a quality improvement plan :

- retraining and re-evaluating all Atos healthcare professionals
- those not meeting the required standard subject to 100% audit until compliant
- or having their approval to carry out assessments revoked by the DWP

Mind you as its being examined by PWC, we can expect a clean bill of health and comfortably probe-free questioning into the deaths of benefit claimants following ATOS's infamous WCA's. Especially since PWC themselves have made 'non-cash' donations worth a half a million pounds to the conservative party.

PWC = PricewaterhouseCooper

___________

Whistle-whistle - UC scrapped for the moment .. .. the £300Mi££ion+ already spent down the tubes, go live is looking like 2015 now, testing from scratch will start again in 2014. The DWP will not be sharing data necessary for local authorities to work out Local Council Tax Reduction until after Spring 2014, possibly 2015.