ESA appeal heard, but tribunal fail to issue result.

stealthstu

Hello all, bit of a rare problem (hopefully) and any help would be appreciated.

My partner is currently going through an ESA appeal, that has been ongoing since April of last year. She already had problems with a DLA appeal where they said they 'hadnt received the appeal request' yet when we put it in, she was awarded it within one week.

She decided to ring DWP today, to find out what is going on with her appeal,as it is a year since the appeal was initially put in, and they said they hadn't heard anything yet,and to give the tribunal service a call to find out if they can give any advise.

So we rang up the Tribunals and they said that the appeal was heard back in August, it was a paper appeal, that my partner did not attend, that a letter was issued to her and to DWP regarding the outcome. DWP have no idea about this, as they have been still requesting the monthly sick notes whilst the appeal is ongoing, and the conversation she had with them this morning, they think the appeal is ongoing from that as well.

The tribunal service said that they will email the department that issues letters to resend it out, but that is all depending on if they still have any of the correspondence on file, seeing as the decision was made 8 months ago.

So what i was asking was if anyone has had this happen before, or if anyone you know has had it happen to them?
And, if they say they don't have the correspondence on file if anyone knows what we would have to do next, seeing as they won't know the outcome of the appeal if they don't have it written down somewhere?

Thank you for any and all help

rogerblack

stealthstu wrote: »

And, if they say they don't have the correspondence on file if anyone knows what we would have to do next, seeing as they won't know the outcome of the appeal if they don't have it written down somewhere?

Thank you for any and all help

If they do not have a copy - and they do seem to destroy paperwork very promptly - then you will need to get the DWP to send the tribunals service a copy of the appeals pack, and it will need re-heard.
I strongly advise you to request an in-person tribunal, if this is the case.

epitome

I've seen it happen before over 12 months since the tribunal date and neither customer nor DWP knew about it. In that case there was no complete record but they did have an electronic copy of the tribunal decision. They refused to tell the customer over the phone, what the decision had been, and told the customer to contact DWP to tell them to send in a request to HMCTS for the decision.


What you need to look out for, is if the decision went against you, you should ensure that the DWP treat it as a official error overpayment so that you don't have to pay it all back.

stealthstu

Thanks both for your comments, received the decision letter today, and she was awarded it, so she's gone 8 months without knowing she'd been awarded, oh well lol

SuziQ

Sounds like she is in a for a nice amount of back payments!