This, On The Other Hand, Is Very Definitely Fair! in Scottish Meanderings

There’s a Guardian Angel in my life. And his name is Karl.

In summary:

I was receiving a benefit called Employment Support Allowance - ESA (assistance for those who can’t work for one reason or another) to the tune of £73.10 a week. The Benefits Office (Department of Works and Pensions - DWP) do assessments every so often - always horrible - never helpful - and after going through one in August 2018 my ESA was stopped.

I opened a Mandatory Reconsideration which is the process you have to go through when you disagree with their decision. This is where you tell them why you disagree and provide any evidence you have from health professionals, family, friends, employers, etc. to support your case. Very occasionally this can overturn the decision. It didn’t in my case.

Next step is appealing and going to a Tribunal to be asked questions in front of a panel which I did in February this year and the benefit was reinstated plus backdated to the date it was stopped. I was told it would be reviewed in September 2020.

Literally 10 minutes later I was told I wouldn’t get it because I had applied for something called Universal Credit, a new system they want everyone to switch to and which would effectively wipe out the decision made by the Tribunal.

Two full weeks of worry and stress later, I managed to get them to agree to cancel the Universal Credit application and the decision of the Tribunal panel went through after all.

Huge relief.

Out of the blue last month, I received a letter telling me they were reducing the payment to £15 a week because I had not told them that I was receiving my work pension of £60 a week (started in September 2018). This was closely followed by a letter stating they had overpaid me to the tune of £3,000 and saying I had to pay this back. So I opened a Mandatory Reconsideration and produced a copy of the form I had sent them in September 2018 with the information about my pension. I fully expect this to be unsuccessful and for them to say they never received it.

Which means it will then have to go to a Tribunal. Again.

Meanwhile, when the Employment Support Allowance was stopped in August 2018, I applied for Personal Independence Payment (PIP). This replaced the old Disability Living Allowance and is a benefit based purely on medical grounds with a payment made for daily living care and one for mobility care covering two categories of Standard payments and Enhanced payments. Again, the initial process is initiated by one of the awful assessments.

I was given a date for one in November (2018) but was ill (Snarf was killed that week as well) so couldn’t go. I thought my application would be thrown out but at the start of this year I was sent a letter asking if I wanted to continue with it? I was very surprised but told them about Snarf and they accepted that and continued to process the application.

In June (this year) I was given another assessment date for PIP which I attended and was subsequently told I had been turned down for the money. I was seriously going to leave things there because I couldn’t face the stress involved in the ensuing process but I happened to read the report from the assessment and noticed I was only 2 points short for the standard daily living component. (It’s worked out on the basis of points for each category of living). That made me wonder if it was worth fighting it on the offchance I might be able to score another 2 points somewhere. So I opened a Mandatory Reconsideration, taking some of the points mentioned and explaining why I didn't agree with the result.

I received another letter saying the decision was the same - no money.

I appealed and it went to Tribunal so I organised the same representative from the local council who came with me to the last one to help me and attend (sometimes it’s worth having someone like that with you to support you - they can also get things like more extensive letters from GPs without being charged for them).

And that’s where I was last week - waiting for a letter with a date for the Tribunal and writing a list of folk to contact to amass evidence to send to the panel beforehand. (And panicking about the £3,000!).

On Monday I got a No Caller ID call - I never answer them but realised in the evening there was a voicemail from it and when I listened to it, a very nice Welshman called Karl informed me someone had looked at my PIP claim again, didn’t agree with the decision and would like to make me an award meaning I wouldn’t have to go to a Tribunal.

I spent the next 20 minutes obsessively evaluating ‘make an award’ to see if there were any other connotations which could come from those words or if that really did mean some much-needed money was going to come my way at last - and then had an agonising night because of course I had to wait until the next morning before I could call back! I had never heard of this happening before.

Next morning I spoke to the lovely Karl and in the course of our chat, bless him, he informed me that he could clearly see that my illness precluded me doing tasks safely and regularly. And no-one had apparently taken that into account. So he wanted to ask me some more questions. Questions such as “Do you find it difficult to mix with others? Do you need assistance or prompting?” I’m afraid I can’t lie in these things so I told the truth that I didn’t need prompting or assisting but that I often had to cancel things or turn back from going somewhere and if symptoms came on at any time, I had to get home asap which made it difficult to be social.

He decided that that was sufficient to gain those 2 extra valuable points which would net me £58.70 a week and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

But Karl wasn’t finished.

“Now regarding mobility - do you have trouble walking? Do you use any kind of aid? And if you, for instance, walk for 10 minutes then have to stop, could you walk the same distance later in the day?” Again I can’t lie so had to say no, I didn’t use an aid but I could only walk for 30 minutes maximum and if I did that on Tuesday it’s highly unlikely I could do the same on Wednesday. I told him I tried to initiate a programme of walking 3 times a week several months ago with pacing days in between but had to stop because it totally wiped me out.

Karl - darling Karl - decided that that was enough to gain me an extra 4 points in the mobility stakes so that I would get £20.30 a week on top of the £58.70.

I was pretty speechless by this time.

But Karl wasn’t finished.

“Now am I right in thinking you didn’t attend your first assessment in November of last year?”

“Yes that’s right” I replied “but I explained why and it was accepted as far as I know.”

“Oh absolutely yes” he reassured me “that’s all ok but I just wanted to check because it means we can backdate this to August last year when you made your original claim.”

So now my brain’s going into overdrive trying to work out what 80 quid a week times 14 (months) was.

But Karl wasn’t finished.

“And just to make you aware Ms. Skinner, this will be under review in 2 years’ time so unless you have to contact us about any changes, we will continue to pay you this amount for the next 24 months.”

So it’s slowly dawning on me that I don’t have to worry about any more stupid letters coming through the post telling me about cuts or assessments for a whole 2 years and that I’ll have enough coming in to possibly finish paying for my house.

But Karl wasn’t finished.

“Now there’s just one thing I have to tell you Ms. Skinner ......”

Oh-oh. Here we go. Bound to be a catch.

“You don’t have to accept this offer. You’re quite within your rights to still go to Tribunal and try and win more points for the Enhanced Rate but if you do and aren’t successful, it’s then out of my hands and you wouldn’t be able to come back and still get this offer.”

Oh right well let me think about that for a sec.

Would I rather say “Yes please give me this money and thank you for wiping out all that future stress in 10 seconds flat and not making me go through that awful business of facing a Tribunal and having to prove to faceless people that I’m ill all over again”?

Or would I rather expend fruitless energy contacting as many professionals as I can and pleading with them to take time out of their busy lives to write a spiel as evidence for the Tribunal, bother my oldest brother and ask him to write yet another letter about what it’s been like to watch his youngest sister have her life catapulted into misery while he did his best to support her, contact my equally busy last employer and get her to write yet another letter explaining what it was like to take on what seemed like a professional, experienced Administrator, spend two weeks teaching her the job (she really did) then have her be unable to come into work one day one month later and literally only do 4 hours work after that for the next 4 months before handing in her notice? Knowing at the same time all this will, without a doubt, make me ill and will probably all be ignored.

I think you can guess which one I went for. And I tried not to ask the wonderful Karl if I could marry him at the same time.

So there we have it. Months of stress avoided. Loads of things on The List not having to be ignored because I would have had to spend ages amassing all that evidence. Again.

And all because there’s a human being working in one of those awful DWP offices.

When I came off the phone, I just sat there gobsmacked. It took several minutes to process it all but slowly, the details started to drip feed into my brain.

I can pay the mortgage!
I can go on holiday after all!
I can buy myself that winter jacket I saw in TK Maxx!
I can get myself a decent pair of slippers (I was about to repair holes in my current pair).
I can carry on with my Italian class!
I don’t have to worry about affording Christmas any more!
I don’t have to worry about being able to afford to keep the car on!

And so on.

It was only when I got to the backdated payment and my brain finished the calculation it was making on the phone that I realised that that backdated amount was more than enough to pay back the £3,000 the ESA lot were asking me for.

And that was the point I burst into tears.

People’s lives should not depend on the whim of someone in a DWP office somewhere being bothered/not being bothered to read a claim properly or being able to make different decisions based on exactly the same information.

That’s crazy. And wrong.

But right now I’m not complaining :)