OK, so what do you do when a decision that you do not agree with arrives? We recommend that you call PIP to request a copy of the assessment report, because this is very likely to be where things went wrong. When we recommend this to clients, they will sometimes say that they have seen the report, but they are talking about the page or so of excerpts from the report, since most of the assessment reports are around 28 pages long.

We go through these reports with clients, pretty much line by line, to see what went wrong, what wasn’t said, what has the Healthcare Professional misunderstood, what didn’t they include in the report and whether things happened just as they described in the musculoskeletal system section. I do not recommend that you say that the Healthcare Professional lied. Look at it from the Decision Maker’s or tribunal’s point of view. Why would they lie? What do they have to gain by lying? Who does have something to gain by lying? You do.

For this reason we much prefer to describe our criticisms of the assessment report as misunderstandings, omissions and mistakes. One client described himself as a bit of an inventor, and he recorded the whole thing using a tiny body camera. The report described a full examination having been carried out by the doctor, whereas the video showed him approaching the client, the client declining and the doctor backing away. That client did no harm by accusing the doctor of lying as he had the evidence to back it up. The client went to the trouble of getting a forensic report on his recording, to exclude the possibility of him having tampered with it. The tribunal in Walsall had a screen to view the video evidence, but they opted not to watch it, dealing instead with the appeal on the usual evidence, which they accepted, allowing his appeal.

Should you complain to the company that employs the Healthcare Professional if you had a bad experience at the assessment? Yes, but if you came out of the assessment and felt that you had been dealt with badly, that it was rushed, that the assessor had been rude or they had refused to look at evidence that you considered to be relevant, then we hope that you would have made that complaint at once, and before anyone could suggest that it was ‘sour grapes’ over a decision that you did not like. Although we have yet to see such a complaint achieve anything, it is helpful, certainly at the appeal stage, to show that you had felt that strongly about your experience.

Remember, if the decision is wrong, we can almost certainly put it right, so do not panic. Challenging the PIP decision is a two-stage process and the first of these is a paper challenge, called a mandatory reconsideration. ‘Mandatory’ because you cannot go around it; you have to go through this stage before you will have the option of an appeal to an independent tribunal.

We might advise you not to instruct us to help at this mandatory reconsideration stage – it depends on the gap between the points that you did score and the points that you should have scored. If you have scored few or no points, then even working together, the chances of persuading the second Decision Maker that the first one got it totally wrong would be close to nil, so it would not be a good use of your energy or resources to instruct me.

Our experience tells us that where you find yourself in that situation, it is better for you to go through the motions, just asking the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to look at the PIP decision again, and instead of involving mes, focus your efforts on a tribunal appeal, where the quality of decision is very much better.

What do we mean by this? Well, as an example, the law says that if you can do one of the activities in the test, preparing food, walking 20 metres, etc. then they must consider whether you can do it safely, do it as often as reasonably required, do it to an acceptable standard, and do it within a reasonable time. This is in regulation 4(2A), but it might as well not be there as far as Healthcare Professionals and Decision Makers are concerned as we have yet to see this part of the law applied correctly. A tribunal will look at these factors and can be persuaded to award points where they apply.

The sad fact is that there is often a difference between what a Decision Maker can be expected to award on a claim, or a mandatory reconsideration, and what an appeal tribunal can be expected to award you. The most recent Government figures that we have seen showed that just 17% of PIP mandatory reconsiderations resulted in any additional points being awarded, never mind the correct award being made, so it can make sense to concentrate on a fight that you can win, rather than one that you are very likely to lose.

The time limit for requesting a reconsideration is one month from the date on the decision letter, regardless of how long it took to reach you. Comply with that time limit if you possibly can, and keep a copy of your letter. I send reconsideration requests ‘signed for’, just for piece of mind, and where the time limit is close, ‘next day delivery guaranteed’. Do not give up if you miss the one-month deadline as it is often possible to get a late request accepted. There is an ‘absolute time limit’ of 13 months (the one month, plus an additional 12 months). Talk to us if you have missed even this extended time limit as we may still be able to help.

When we work on a mandatory reconsideration, we make every effort to get the right result, so that the delay, stress and expense of a tribunal appeal can be avoided. We begin by going through the PIP test with you to see where you should have scored points, why you should have scored them and how strong a claim you have for those points.

Once we know what it is we have to prove, we can then take you through the assessment report written by the Healthcare Professional at the face-to-face meeting, to see where this went wrong. Some clients believe that the reasons included in the PIP decision is the full report, but the assessment report is usually about 28 pages in length. We go through this with you pretty much line by line, to see what is wrong, what has been misunderstood and what has not been included at all.

We will have agreed sources of evidence to support our view of where you should have scored points. This could be medical reports or letters that you already have, or that we request. It could be medical notes from your GP surgery, but could also be witness statements taken by me from people who know for themselves how you are affected by your medical conditions.