Page 75 - Reforming Benefits Decision-Making

Understanding why appeals are so often successful and what recurring issues
there are would assist the DWP in improving its decision-making.

2.105 The Tribunal issues a decision notice which states the outcome of the appeal
and provides a brief summary of the reasons. If either party to the appeal
wants fuller reasons, they can request a statement of reasons. We were told by
the DWP that the decision notices often lack sufficient information for them
to understand why an appeal was successful and therefore they cannot
currently collect any meaningful feedback from them. Whilst decision notices
do vary in terms of the level of detail they contain, we consider that they
provide valuable information that, when analysed and collated could provide a
rich source of feedback for the DWP. The summary of reasons was added to
decision notices in 2013 with the express aim of enabling the DWP to assess
areas that may require further improvement. For appeals relating to PIP
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assessments or WCAs the decision notice will state the points awarded by the
Tribunal and for which activities and descriptors. As the DWP has access to
the details of each case including the points awarded, and who carried out the
assessment, this therefore provides a variety of potential data points. For
example, it should be possible to identify particular activities that are more
likely to be awarded higher points on appeal, whether claimants with
particular health conditions are more likely to be successful on appeal and
whether particular assessment providers or assessors are being successfully
appealed more frequently than others.

2.106 We appreciate that doing this would involve an investment of time and
resources by the DWP. However, in our view, it is vital to improve first
instance decision-making and the resulting improvements will, in the long
run, lead to significant savings in mandatory reconsideration and appeals
costs. Further, the DWP does already collate statistics on the primary reason
that PIP appeals are successful. If it can be done for PIP appeals, it is
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unclear why it cannot be done in respect of others. Given the level of
spending on automation by the DWP it is perhaps surprising that a way cannot

203 DWP, Mandatory consideration of revision before appeal: Government response to public
consultation (2012) p. 6.
204 DWP, ‘Response to Freedom of Information Request FOI2019/12127’ (see n. 84 above)

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