My email received this morning from Benefits and Work blog contained this bit of info which is interesting. Anyone else heard this?
"PIP is in a mess. We all know it and only the DWP try to deny it.
But the surest signs that panic is beginning to set in is the fact that Capita have now more than doubled the pay they are offering to assessors in their attempt to get on top of the backlog. Capita health professionals now have a ‘new incentive scheme’ which means they can earn up to £900 a day. Not bad for physiotherapists more accustomed to earning £40 an hour.
In addition, the DWP have rewritten their guidance to assessors in the hope of persuading them to carry out fewer face-to-face medicals and assess more people just on paper evidence, backed up by a telephone call to the claimant to get additional information where necessary. Currently 98% of PIP assessments are face-to-face, but the DWP is aiming for this figure to drop to around 75%. This means a big increase in the number of PIP claimants who will be getting a call out of the blue from an Atos or Capita health professional."
Hi Bren , yes it is a bit of news that may help a few but I don't hold my breath esp as Capita have had my pip claim now for weeks, ATOS originally had it in Jan so a right b-lls up all round I think lol .
Good luck for Friday and lets hope you get the right result and if poss a nice assessor if there are such people!
WOW! That is very interesting! Although not surprising? As the number of assessors doing the job can only see a limited number of clients daily so sooner or later something has to give?
Thank you so much for this useful information it is appreciated that you have shared it with us all.
Well they sent me a letter last week saying that my ESA is due to finish on the 31/07/14 as i would have been claiming for 365 days, I did send an email to my MP saying this whole process has become a joke but his a conservative so i dont think he really cares that much..
On a serious note I've made my way through the complaints procedure and i've had a call from the Top man (sorry cant remember the name fog head on) who's looking into the whole treatment I've received his promised he'll be back in contact within 15 working days so fingers crossed i'll hear soon, his still 8 days left not that i'm keeping an eye on the days...
Sorry to hear your MP hasn't helped, I hope you get better satisfaction from this top person.
Here's hoping that before 8 days is up you'll get some kind of further help.
I wonder if they have any sense of how awful it is for us trying not to count the days and even then dreading the phone call or letter, I always used to feel a lot better when I got to the stage where I said "right, fed up with the tension now, I just want to know" and shortly after I would get my answer.
I recently completed a PIP form for someone with Crohns and waiting to see whether I've helped him to succeed is pretty bad too.
Just had the phone call from Capita this morning cancelling my second appoint, again for the "health professional being unavailable". Each time the call is only 30-40 minutes before the appointment is due to start, but luckily for me it's a home assessment so I haven't had to travel miles unnecessarily, however, both myself & my husband have now had to take 2 days of our holiday entitlement from work, and will now have to take a third each. The new appointment is now 2 weeks away!
Really annoyed as I understand that we are only able to reschedule the assessment once, so how come they can do this as much as they like, especially when we are the ones with health issues that get worse with the stress of all of this?
As you can probably tell, I am fuming & everything is now starting to hurt even more than before already.
I have asked to speak to a manager in Capita about this - apparently, I should get a call back in 5 working days! This is ludicrous! Is there anything I can do about this, all I want is to get the assessment over & done with as I'm sick of worrying about it all the time? I've been waiting almost 4 months already since the paperwork was passed to the assessment team, and I feel that they deliberately mess us about so that we'll just give in as it affects our health.......
Disgusting! I still not had any reply since letter stating DLA been extended, have no idea how long for either, letter simply states what I just wrote. I just hope they finally get act together and get this whole fiasco under control but alas I really cannot see that happening in the near future esp with Election looming in 10 months. All we can do is lobby the MPs but like most they don't seem to have power to do anything or willingness. Again maybe this is the ploy to reduce numbers, and I wonder how many have indeed given up.
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