Medical capability assessment affect on Income Support

sghughes42

Can anyone advise if failing to get enough points on a medical capability assessment will affect the ability to claim IS if the claimant is still getting medical certificates from their doctor?

My partner is in this situation - due to stress and depression she was signed off about 6 months back - she was on JSA at the time. She had the assessment about a month back and only scored 1 point, with the form saying she was no longer entitled to NI credits. She's tried contacting the people who sent the letter to clarify the situation without success and as you can imagine the stress of this is making her situation worse.

Also, does anyone know if you need to score 15 points on the assessment to qualify for anything, or is it 15 points for IB but fewer for NI credits? The score they have given her is total fiction with many things totally incorrect, but I reckon that even corrected she would be unlikely to make the 15 points it mentions. However, we are wondering if an appeal might get enough to reinstate the NI credits even if it doesn't get her IB. The daft thing is that if she hadn't tried to better herself by becoming a student a few years back she would have had enough NI credits to claim IB from the off rather than having to claim IS....

Any reassurance would be helpful to her, although of course she will keep trying to get an answer from the benefits people in Preston. TIA!

seven-day-weekend

AFAIK if you do not qualify for Incapacity Benefit, or Income Support due to Incapacity, you will not qualify for NI credits either.

tigtag02

I beleive that mental heath issues only need 10 points for IB.

I can relate to you with the *mad up assessment*, we are going through the same at the mo with my OH ~ all I can suggest is appeal, appeal, appeal.

AFAIK she can still *sign on* to have her NI credits paid (this will not mean she can qualify credit wise in the future but relate to her state pension (I think))

[Deleted User]

could ask for a copy of the assessment,and if its so obviously wrong then lodge an appeal against it,as already said its 10 points for MH issues not 15 as for physical ones

tigtag02

woodbine wrote: »

could ask for a copy of the assessment,and if its so obviously wrong then lodge an appeal against it,as already said its 10 points for MH issues not 15 as for physical ones

Yes, get a copy.

You may just find its a total shambles :rolleyes:

sghughes42

Thanks all for the prompt answers. She may appeal, the difficulty is that she was hoping to try and get back 'to normal' in the next month or two, depending how her condition goes. Appealing will bring a lot of stress so will only make things worse, therefore we are mostly wondering if she will still be entitled to IS as long as she continues to get medical certificates, or does the medical assessment over-ride these? If she is still entitled to IS then she will probably leave it, if not then I think she will have to appeal as going back on JSA at the moment is unlikely to help her condition - it was the offensive and degrading treatment from jobcentre staff that caused this in the first place.

sghughes42

Another development on this I would appreciate advice on. She received a letter today, dated June 5th saying that they were stopping her Income Support from the 1st of May. Now, she didn't even have the medical until the 7th of May so I'm at a loss as to how they can stop it before this, never mind how they can take 6 weeks to let her know. She is trying to check from her bank when the last payment actually went in as if it was stopped on May 1st then she is quite likely very near to being overdrawn if she hasn't already passed that mark.

Our plan is to get the office to look again at the decision, hopefully backed up by a note from her Doctor who she is seeing this afternoon. However, if this takes as long as the original decision took then I don't know how she can manage for another 5-6 weeks without any money coming in. I can help a little but it will cause me problems. Does anyone know if she will be back-paid the Income Support if she is successful, or will she lose it completely? Is her only option to get money to sign back on for Jobseekers - something which will only make her condition worse? Any advice at all would be appreciated...

KxMx

sghughes42 wrote: »

Thanks all for the prompt answers. She may appeal, the difficulty is that she was hoping to try and get back 'to normal' in the next month or two, depending how her condition goes. Appealing will bring a lot of stress so will only make things worse, therefore we are mostly wondering if she will still be entitled to IS as long as she continues to get medical certificates, or does the medical assessment over-ride these? If she is still entitled to IS then she will probably leave it, if not then I think she will have to appeal as going back on JSA at the moment is unlikely to help her condition - it was the offensive and degrading treatment from jobcentre staff that caused this in the first place.

I'm afraid the medical assessment decision does over-ride anything else. The GP will know and won't issue a certificate. Neither will the JobCentre accept a medical certificate.
If you lodge an appeal then she should automatically go onto IS which is then reduced by 20% i believe.
You MUST formally appeal and not ask for a re-consideration. Appealing is the only way to get the reduced rate IS. As part of ther appeals process the office will automatically look again at their decision.
I made the mistake of asking first for a re-consideration, and spent weeks without income until I was told to appeal formally!

sghughes42

Thanks, that is the information we wanted to know. One odd thing though, her GP has issued her with another certificate, although this could be because he knows she is contesting this.
What is the best approach now? We were going to ask them to look at the decision again - if we do this will IS be reinstated or do we need to appeal for this to happen? Can we appeal before asking them to look at it again and can anything be done to get back the 6 weeks worth of IS she hasn't got due to it taking them that long to tell her they were stopping it? (Indeed, as they stopped it before the medical had even taken place is there anything we can do about that?) Thanks again.

KxMx

Just edited my post with the correct info!
The IS should be backdated to the day of the decision. They certainly shouldn't have stopped it before the medical, you'll have to fight them on that.

sghughes42

Thanks again, KxMx. The problem we have is whether we wait for our copy of the medical report to arrive or appeal without it. With it we could do a more comprehensive appeal and actually answer the points in the report. Without it we are guessing as to what they have put, but will at least get the appeal in quicker.