Forum Home → Discussion → Disability benefits → Thread
PIP phoned client to put them off going through with MR
Has anyone heard of PIP (presumably a decision-maker) phoning a client after they have registered a MR and before a decision is made to warn them that if they go through with the MR, they might lose the award they’ve already got? Our client was warned of this and asked if they wanted to retract the MR.
We’ve heard of this happening between MR and appeal but not at the MR stage. Anyone else?
I’m sure one of their policy papers said they were aiming to do more “courtesy calls” or whatever they call them. Ostensibly for the benefit of the clients.
Some of my client’s have had these calls, and while some of them felt they’d been encouraged to withdraw the MR, I think there’s a bit of a line between encouragement and highlighting the option - I suspect it’s more the latter.
More often than not (and you should see this in the bundle further down the road), there was also a question from DWP during the call to the tone of “do you have any further info/evidence?” - which is probably the main aim of the call.
Where the client has a rep from an organisation named on the MR request it does seem somewhat inappropriate/unnecessary as the rep should have covered this already, but hey, not like DWP have an enormous backlog they could be dealing with.