Has anyone got a phone number for their Appeals Team please?

I'll swap Exeter BDC's Appeals Team phone number for Chippenham's, anyone tempted?

Can't promise this is right but the contact number we used to use was 01249 42800 and fax 01249 428001, may have changed now , as we are based in Chippenham we have to now deal with St.Austell ( which apparantly is in Plymouth)oh what a tangled web the DWP weave. ,

Sorry 01249 428000

Thanks we'll give it a go, Funnily enough Exeter BDC is errr based in Plymouth too i.e. Breakwater wotsit, although appeals section and customer services are in Exeter.

Sorry i can't resist asking this, how many yards is it from your advice centre's front door to Chippenham BDC's front door?

No more than 300yrds, if you think thats frustrating for us, it nothing to the response we get from clients when they find out its not actually closed (as they thought) but processing Somerset and Dorset claims.

300 yards!

If its any consolation Chippenham BDC has had a chequered history. When it was first set up to cover urban Dorset, it had no telephony system initially (confirmed at a liaison meeting in Poole during 2006), so even the most straight forward issues we had (Worked in Bournemouth) to deal with via the Customer Services manager in Bournemouth, her contact with Chippenham was initially limited to email.

Then it took over rural Dorset, the phone lines were so limited, that if you rang it, you'd get a voicemail message to the effect of saying 'we are very very busy, give us a go later'.

Now it does ESA for Somerset, and were back to a rural Dorset scenario if this week is anything to go by.

When we asked Exeter BDC why they would not be doing ESA, they told us that they had been out bid effectively. Internal markets!

300 yards.

Our Disability Benefit Centre is, literally, right next door to us yet we must send post to Chester, which is roughly 30 miles away.

Insanity I tell ya! Insanity!

Marketisation of the public sector, profit for the contractors, and waste and inefficiency for everyone else, institutionalised insanity.

IT gives a new meaning to Hinchey V SoS and not being able to second guess how the DWP work,the DWP have no idea how they work from week to week especially debt management. On a serious note what is now true is that in the past if you had a problem(e.g recentley took 10 weeks to re instate ICB after a successful appeal) the client could access the DWP direct and the DWP had to sort things out . Now the claimant is cut adrift and isolated as are we to a great degree, so how many people we don't see just give up, as most of my clients would have given up if the Bureau had done the chasing.

Chippenham BDC's generic number, Mmmmmmmm phone and get answer machine saying all lines are busy phone later. Still can't track down a number to their appeals section.

Systemic failings alright!

So we have to phone customer services again or as their known down here 'gatekeepers' with another basic query e.g. has the appeal application been received (Chippenham don't appear to send acknowledgements of having received appeal).

Rang customer services they gave the info i'm after, but won't give me a direct phone number for appeals, apparently i have to go through 0845 etc etc.

Response to the comments on insanity, it not if your trousering the profits, as Del Boy would say ' Lovely jubbly', almost as lucrative as MP's expenses