Appeal Help

Hi

I hope someone can point me in the right direction - I have a couple AA, DLA, and Industrial Injuries appeals coming up and was wondering if there are any resources I can look at in terms of caselaw etc?

I am a relatively new caseworker and have only really dealt with PIP and WCA appeals which both have the helpful .info websites - is there anything like that for AA, DLA or Industrial Injuries?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Adam

Hi Adam,

You could start with the Disability Alliance website - https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/how-we-can-help/benefits-information/law-pages/case-law-summaries

and, of course, the Rightsnet caselaw section in Resources

Good luck

Chris

If you have access to them (as they’re not cheap!) the Sweet & Maxwell law volumes contain plenty of commentary on various bits of caselaw from the various acts and regulations (indeed its what you’re paying for really as the legislation is online) so they can be a good resource though possibly not the most beginner friendly! The CPAG handbook can be a surprisingly good starting point and is probably easier to use. You’ll tend to find that quite a lot of the footnotes will point to caselaw not just the legislation. You can then google around (or use RightsNet) to find the actual cases being referred to and read up on them yourself.

More generally though I think it’s important not to get too bogged down into caselaw (unless you really need to). At the end of the day the main issue with most DLA/AA appeals is the same as it would be for a PIP appeal and that is showing that the client satisfies the specified criteria to be awarded the benefit. As long as you can do that you’ll win more than you’ll lose with or without caselaw.

As above, there isn’t much point getting bogged down in caselaw. You need to understand the benefit conceptually first. CPAG or DRH are good starts. The main differences between WCA/PIP and DLA/AA are (a) that the former are based on accumulating points whereas the latter are based on meeting certain pass/fail tests and (b) medical assessments are less frequent for DLA/AA so there is more focus on the presentation of the issue in the paperwork.

I would caution you against taking on the industrial injuries cases you refer to. They are a whole different beast of arcane rules, changing schemes and percentage assessments of disability. You should get some proper training or at least have dealt with some initial claims to get your bearings before doing appeals. I believe it is the case that many of the unions dealing with manual labour have the facility to assist with these sorts of issues.