It certainly isn't a blanket policy - I don't know of any of our successful ESA appeals where they have asked for a statement of reasons.
What is a concern is whether your local office is just doing this because they are just looking for the reasons why each successful appeal is allowed, this being a relatively new benefit. Years ago, when I worked on IS appeals at DWP, a colleague on Incapacity Benefit asked for a statement of reasons for all appeals that succeeded after the introduction of the PCA. As local office staff cannot actually decide to appeal (you have to put the case to the office in Leeds who deal with Upper Tribunal cases), his actions were largely unnecessary and, after the Tribunals Service got wind of what he was doing, pressure was brought to bear on him to stop, via his line manager.
You are also right to note that implementation of tribunal decisions in general has a shockingly low priority in the "to do" list at JobcentrePlus
Everything is about targets (and I don't mean just JobcentrePlus). There is a target to reply to MP enquiries, as far as I am aware, so that it why an MP's enquiry may speed things up, although it is up to the tribunal judge as to how long s/he takes to send the statement of reasons out
Brian
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