President of Appeal Tribunal Report on Standards of Decision Making by the Department 2021-2022
Date published:
The total number of appeals registered during the year to which this report relates was 4269, of which 661 were monitored. Unfortunately, there has been a large increase in the overall level of incorrectness.
During the previous year it was 5.8% compared with 9.2% this year. Across all cases monitored the decision maker was judged to have made an incorrect decision in 61 cases. The figures illustrated reveal that there was a considerable degree of variation in the level of incorrectness of initial decisions across different benefits. The largest number (27) of initial incorrect decisions were in respect of Universal Credit (UC). This represents 12.5% of all UC monitored appeals (216). That is unnecessarily high and causes me considerable concern.
The overall percentage of correctly made decisions altered by the tribunal was 36.9%. As with previous years the decisions in this category were altered because the Tribunal accepted evidence which the Decision Maker was unwilling to accept, or the Tribunal was given additional evidence which was not available to the Decision Maker.
The most common categories of appeals registered during the year were in respect of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) (2086) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) (682). 11.1% of the monitored PIP cases and 8.3% of the monitored ESA cases were assessed as having an incorrect initial decision. These percentages are much higher than in the previous year