esa appeal

[sandra57]

does anyone know how long you wait for your eas appeal i put my appeal in 11th october with letters off my dr and hospital drs still heard nothing.thank you x

[sueuk]

Hi Sandra I put mine in in August and still waiting to hear ! Did you recieve a letter from them to say they had got your appeal ?

[jacksie]

Hey i can beat that early May 2012,i've been waiting for a date of appeal,i just keep sending sick notes in and wait,they said it might take 12 months it sounds like they got something right.jacksiex.

[Deefer]

I have been waiting since March 2012- so I can beat both of you!!! I have just been told that it is 18 months waiting time around these parts.

Jacksie - if you are sending in sick notes I assume you are on assessment rate ESA. If it is contribution based they will stop it after 12 months. My money was stopped without notice and I'm fighting them at the moment to get it reinstated. The government brought in the 365 day rule last April which applies to people in the WRAG group. Unfortunately they didn't allow for people waiting that long on appeal. I have a letter which states that I would be on the assessment rate until the results of my appeal are known and when Lord whatisname gave the statement about the new rules for appealing benefit the other week, he said that it wasn't going to change for the existing appeals and that ESA would continue to be paid pending the appeal. Yet more stress - 3 phone calls, each time speaking to people who didn't seem to know what I was on about. One of them even told me it was my fault for choosing to go to appeal!! I am now going to write and see if that gets through ( although I won't hold my breath! )

[kathleen66]

Hi, Id been waiting for my appeal since November last year, got a date about 3 weeks ago for April 2nd. My E.S.A ran out on 28th Jan this year(as id been claiming for 1 year after I was finished from work on grounds of ill health-long story !) and I cant claim a penny since!, I was told if Im successful in the Appeal I ll be able to claim the money backdated, how ever if I dont win (not very likely from everything I keep reading!) thats it!. Im supposed to live on £280 a month less! I sometimes think I ll just go and sign on, just so I can claim some money, but Id be lying about my capabilitys and I was brought up to tell the truth. It infuriates me to see some people claiming every benefit under the sun and getting away with it when they are not really elligible, then genuine people like myself who are really ill and have worked for 28 years are made to feel like criminals! No wonder we are ill, the stress of going to an appeal to be judged by a complete stranger who knows nothing of my illness is enough to cause major stress itself. No wonder I now have to take antidepressants. Your told you have to accept this is your pain and you just have to deal with it! Yeah right! they should try livin for a week with every part of their bodies aching, not being able to remember anything, and constantly makin a fool of themselves by jumbling up their words and saying the wrong thing and feeling like an alien has taken over their body and replaced the real them with a zombie! Sorry, Im off on one and rambling, I could go on all day-if I had the energy and my fingers would hit the right keys on the laptop and stop going freezing cold and aching ! Hope you all get your dates soon, maybe you should contact them just in case theyve forgotten about you ! I am getting help from the welfare rights, although they say they are pushed to the limit because of all the claimants,and when I asked if I would be meeting someone before the big day to discuss my situation, they said no but someone will be there 15 mins before your appeal time !!!! How are they going to know me apart from the papers I have sent them!! Not their fault I know but cant help thinking its just gonna be a big stressfull waste of time and im dreading it!

[Deefer in reply to kathleen66]

Wishing you all the luck in the world with your appeal. We are at the mercy of the media who always ( and quite rightly so) publicise the fraudsters. Unfortunately joe public then get the idea that every benefit claimant is getting thousands of pounds a year when for most of us that is far from the truth. I have just had to fill in an application form for my blue badge renewal and I just don't think I'm going to be successful. It was like filling in the ESA or DLA forms -they want to know so much - and as usual don't allow for fluctuating conditions like ours. Like you Kathleen I was brought up to tell the truth, so find it hard to explain to these people that I vary so much from day to day but always have problems, whether it can be seen or not. I just don't know how far I can walk, it depends on how I am each morning, but I won't lie and say I can't walk. Oh for the powers that be to just understand this weird and wonderful condition of ours!! It always makes me laugh when we are told to avoid stress as it will only make us worse. Fat chance of that!

[kathleen66]

Exactly!, and thanks for understanding totally where im coming from ! I also can not say wether I can do x ,y and z. it differs each day, One day its my knees and I cant climb the stairs, the next its my neck or my arms or my back or all four. ( and thats just a start to the list) I would love to have my old life back- work and social life. I ve been told that I could lift an empty box and sit for an hour(even tho I cant) so I am capable of working. Im sure that would go down well in an interview and at the job centre when I m trying to claim job seekers allowance! I just wish one day they would say they ve found a cure, or even a reason why we have this condition. Maybe then people would believe us and treat us differently . Not holding my breath tho!

[sandra57]

HI PHONED THE APPEAL COURT YESTERDAY IM STILL NO NEARER TO A HEARING IF YOU LOOK AT ME I LOOK PALE BUT WELL SO I DONT THINK IT WILL GO MY WAY . MY DLA FINISHES IN OCTOBER BEEN INFORMED I WILL HAVE TO APPLY FOR P,I.P ANOTHER THINK TO WORRY ABOUT AND MUDDLE ME UP .X