Has anyone who is due an ESA reassessement this year been sent an ESA50?

Robbie64

I was due to have an ESA reassessment (WCA) in September 2020 but the WCA was put back for 2 years due to massive backlogs due to covid. My ESA WCA date is now September 2022 which means that an ESA50 would normally be sent out 8 weeks earlier, i.e. mid July.

Has anyone who is due a reassessment this year been sent an ESA50? I believe that there are still massive backlogs and I'm curious to know if WCA's are still on hold for exisiting ESA claimants? My understanding is that the DWP are concentrating on new claims for ESA and people on UC who are submitting fit notes. Also how long is it taking for HAAS/ Maximus to schedule a WCA and how long is it then taking the DWP to make a decision? From what I've read here and elsewhere it seems to be taking months from when the ESA50 is sent out to the DWP actually making a decision on both ESA and UC.

Any information that anyone can give would be welcome. If I am going to be reassessed I'd rather complete an ESA50 now and have it ready to send off when the ESA50 arrives. That's because the DWP don't allow more than 4 weeks to complete the form and the post around here at the moment is chaotic and it often takes a week or more for letters to arrive.

If it  makes a difference I am based in the north east England region.

poppy12345

I'm not aware of reassessments starting back yet. They're still concentrating on new claims only because the backlogs are still huge. I've been on ESA since 2012 and i've never known them reassess me anywhere near the timescale they've given me. Every single time it's gone way past that time.

calcotti

If you want to be prepared I suggest you draft a ESA50. You can review if circumstances change. Whenever the ESA50 actually comes you will have a working document to start from.

Robbie64

poppy12345 said:

I'm not aware of reassessments starting back yet. They're still concentrating on new claims only because the backlogs are still huge. I've been on ESA since 2012 and i've never known them reassess me anywhere near the timescale they've given me. Every single time it's gone way past that time.

I've actually only been assessed for ESA twice, once when I moved from Incapacity Benefit and Income Support in January 2013 (and that was a paper assessment) and the second in March 2019. I was supposed to be reassessed in January 2015 and 2017 but reassessments were put on hold when the then health service provider (Capita if I recall) pulled out of the contract causing a massive backlog.

Robbie64

calcotti said:

If you want to be prepared I suggest you draft a ESA50. You can review if circumstances change. Whenever the ESA50 actually comes you will have a working document to start from.

I've still got my last one to work from so will use that as the basis for a draft one as little has changed. I'll add in some recent examples of my health problems.

I was hoping that there would be no reassessment this year as I've just gone through a PIP reassessment (thankfully done on paper after the Case Manager at the DWP phoned me up to clarify a few points and it worked in my favour). Back in 2019 I had both benefits reassessed at the same time with my ESA assessment being done the day before my birthday and the PIP one a few days later. I was quite ill at the time and my father was seriously ill so it was a completely stressful nightmare.

Robbie64

Bumping my own topic here.

Does anyone know if reassessments have now started back up? As I mentioned in my first post, my WCA date is September 2022 so I'm getting anxious, waiting for the dreaded white envelope.

I do hope that my WCA date gets pushed back another 2 years but I'll not know if it has been done until the WCA date for this year is reached (I believe the date just extends automatically so it's pointless me phoning up as the date will still show as September 2022).

calcotti

Robbie64 said:

Bumping my own topic here.

Does anyone know if reassessments have now started back up? 

Not to my knowledge.

poppy12345

Robbie64 said:

Bumping my own topic here.

Does anyone know if reassessments have now started back up?

No they haven't.

Robbie64

Thanks for the replies. Fingers crossed my WCA date is put back for another 2 years 🤞

Robbie64

Firstly, a Happy New Year to all.

This is a follow up to my post from a few months ago. In November I made a Subject Access Request to the DWP to obtain a copy of what the DWP hold about me with regards to my ESA claim. It's a way of finding out the WCA date without spending an eternity on hold waiting to speak to someone. On Saturday I received the paperwork - all 800+ pages! I had asked for a copy of my file since the beginning of the year but some enthusiastic Civil Servant decided to send me everything they had for my ESA claim going all the way back to January 2013.

I quite literally had to go through everything page by page until I got to the part where it lists my WCA End date - it was on page 402!

The date has been put back by two years, to September 2024. There's no guarantee of course that they will wait that long before sending out an ESA50 but given the massive backlogs it's likely that it will be closer to that date than before.

I just thought I'd post this in case anyone else was wondering what was happening with WCA's / ESA50s for ongoing claims.

kulu400

That’s interesting I’m waiting to hear myself. I think Poppy said that they haven’t restarted assessments yet. Out of interest was there anymore detail on the decision ? Did they contact your GP or say it was on past history ? 

Also Poppy if you’re about is there a link anywhere to latest official news on this ? Like I’d there somewhere they’d announce if assessments had restarted ?