Welfare Benefits

Our Welfare Benefits advisers are Richard Stacey, Tom Bidmead and Christian Sweeney.

Richard Stacey          Tom Bidmead

Maintaining a claim for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) was more onerous than we feared. A review of the descriptors to take account of “aids and adaptations” that the claimant could reasonably take advantage of was announced and whilst this was always relevant in determining eligibility for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) it was not the case in Incapacity Benefit (IB).

The reforms to the Tribunal service appeared to us to invest more power in the Tribunal "judge" than the traditional tribunal chairman once had.  However, we always attend at Tribunal (although we are not funded to do so) as we feel it has a significant positive impact on the outcome of the Tribunal hearing. Representatives are well thought of and much appreciated by the Tribunal.

We found processing times for initial claims were getting longer.  When a client contacted us with this particular issue we found it more pragmatic to direct or refer them to the local MP.  The caseworkers are excellent and have direct access to decision-makers; an access long since denied to humble benefit advisers.

A significant amount of new cases were from people from abroad with right to reside issues of increasing complexity.  There were some very interesting cases as this client group became more settled and issues such as changes in status, pregnancy, loss of employment entered the mix.  The kind of issue we were faced with was typically with clients who held foreign passports, but who had been living and working in the UK for several years, trying to claim JSA and pension credit when they were out of work and/or facing retirement.

With regards to general appeals to decisions for income support, in April 2009 there were 5000 pending appeals at the Cardiff office. By April 2010 this had risen to 21000.  Some of those appeals are in excess of 13 months old.  This led to some distressing tales from clients facing genuine hardship.

ESA appeals also impacted upon us heavily.  The statistics suggested that over 60% of claimants were being rejected at medical examination.  Statistics as to the amount of appeals were not readily available.  However, the fact that the Cardiff office was so overloaded suggested that ESA was having an effect on the tribunal system as well. Most of the ESA appeals we represented were successful, which we found doubly frustrating because the decision-makers were clearly not interpreting the descriptors correctly.

We assisted so many clients during the year with tax credit overpayment problems. This was and is still a system doomed to hinder, rather than help, the majority of people who are supposed to benefit from it. Our main advice was to dispute the overpayment, but challenging and disputing tax credit overpayments is a long and stressful process for the client. If the initial dispute was rejected we would lodge a formal complaint.  The complaint had two stages.  In the majority of the cases a complaint was rejected which then led to a complaint to the Adjudicator's Office.  However, between submitting the letter of complaint and being assigned a caseworker, there was at one point a 9-month delay.  Having been assigned a caseworker the complaint was normally investigated within seven weeks with 56% of complaints upheld in the claimant's favour.

We were concerned, as we were in an election year, that benefit claimants could only fear having their benefits removed by a government desperate to retain votes and opposition desperate to win them, whilst at the same time making some significant savings to the overall purse; our fears were not unfounded as the recent government spending review proved. We have real concerns that the state can no longer be relied upon to support people with an illness that makes them incapable for work.