Delays in benefit appeals are creating homelessness and affecting claimants’ mental health, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council (AJTC) has said in a hard-hitting report.
In Time for Action, the AJTC calls for the introduction of a 42-day time limit for decision-makers to hear appeals on disability living allowance and other benefits.
The authors say appeals should be lodged with the Tribunals Service, not with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and suggest that delays in housing benefit are urgently addressed, with early neutral evaluation to be piloted as a means of encouraging dispute resolution.
They also recommend making the listing process for appeals more flexible to give high priority to vulnerable cases.
Currently, while claimants must submit their appeal within one month, the DWP and HM Revenue & Customs need only respond “as soon as reasonably practicable”. In practice, however, the report states, the DWP took an average of 202 days to process appeals, with some cases taking longer than a year.
Richard Thomas, AJTC chair, said: “It is unacceptable to expect DWP customers simply to put up with ever longer delays to get their appeals heard in order, in many cases, to obtain the benefits they should have received from the outset of their claim.
“Never was the old legal maxim ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ more apt.”
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