How long does a mandatory reconsideration take?

scottleag

I wrote to the DWP asking for a mandatory reconsideration of my pension credit award as they had failed to take permanent disregards into account when assessing the award. I thought this would be a fairly straightforward procedure. Especially as I sent therm a detailed list of such disregards with dates of payments received.

That was on December 1st, five months ago to the day. I've heard nothing since. I did phone up a few weeks ago and was told it was in the system.

But should it really take this long and how much longer should I wait before contacting CAB of my MP?

Newcad

It's the old "piece of string" question.

There are no set time limits, so they can take as long as they like.

As you note, sometimes it takes an official complaint, and/or the involvement of your MPs office before the DWP get their fingers out.

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions/about/complaints-procedure

scottleag

I've now got two on the go. They've finally re-assessed pension credit following my wife passing away. But once again they've ignored the disregards so I've asked for a new mandatory reconsideration while they've yet to respond to the first one.

The whole thing is getting more and more confusing. Savings are calculated as being the same as at the time of the first request for mandatory reconsideration BUT…. they say payments for nine weeks following my wife dying would remain the same as before yet the figure they mention is less than we were receiving (and continued to receive until this week) with the new lower sum coming into effect from March 27th. Though it was only yesterday it changed.

Before this letter (dated May 11th) was sent out I got a phone call from the DWP locally who said they were sending someone out on a home visit next week. I explained everything over the phone - the date of my wife's death, date it was registered, date I used the 'Tell Us Once' service (same day as registration of death), date of letter I sent to the DWP when I noticed they were still paying pension credit for a couple. This person told me not to worry about that was she said there's a twelve weeks run-on where payment doesn't change (nine weeks according to the letter). I told her the payments had remained the same for fourteen weeks Yet they insisted this home visit had to go ahead and someone's coming round next Wednesday.

I've no idea why this is going ahead. I know I've done nothing wrong. I even wrote and told them they were still paying PC for a couple when they shouldn't have been. I can produce every document and letter they could possibly want to see and told them so.

It's not quite four months since my wife died and I've only just managed to spread the last of her ashes in a location she wanted last Monday. I could really do without this. Their failure to recognise permanent disregards or complete a mandatory reconsideration more than five months after it was requested was bad enough. So too their second failure to include permanent disregards prompting a second mandatory reconsideration request. But insisting on someone coming to the house is really worrying.

Robbie64

From a check on Google, the Pension Credit run on is 12 weeks.

I would let the visit go ahead and hope that the issue(s) gets sorted out afterwards. Unfortunately it's unlikely to be the visiting officer who sorts it out. I believe that these days the visiting officer writes up a report for the area of the DWP that requested the visit and then sends the report (electronically) to the relevant office to be dealt with. In my day, long ago, when i used to be a visiting officer for what is now the DWP, the visiting officer would sort out everything though that was when most benefits were administered locally. Now they are administered in remote processing centres and the visiting service is basically a fact finding part of the DWP, sent by the various remote processing centres to obtain information..

scottleag

Thank you. I'm certainly not going to try and cancel the visit. They'd only want it re-arranged. Though I am nervous about it as nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Although not specifically stated the DWP letter seems to suggest a run on of nine weeks at a lower rate. The phone call about the visit was on May 12th. The letter is dated May 11th so my presumption is they are related.

Murphybear

It took me 13 months to get Pension Credit. 🙀 I asked them what the delay was and all they said was they didn’t know.