Welfare Benefits
Welfare Benefit Appeals
Osbornes Law are one of only a few law firms to have a contract with the Legal Aid Agency in the area of Welfare Benefits law. However, legal aid is only available for cases before the Upper Tribunal. We can advice whether your case is suitable for such an appeal.
Welfare Benefit Appeals
Legal aid is only in scope for cases before the Upper Tribunal. This means that legal aid is not available for general advice on welfare benefits issues, or for appeals of benefit decisions before the First Tier Tribunal.
If you have received a negative decision in your first appeal, however, and wish to explore the possibility of an appeal to the Upper Tribunal we may be able to assist you with this under our Welfare Benefits contract.
Our London solicitors also continue to provide assistance in appeals before the First Tier Tribunal and general advice in respect of welfare benefits matters. If possible we will try to agree a fixed fee for work done on your case. In rare cases, we may be able to apply for exceptional funding from the Legal Aid Agency to cover work that is out of scope for legal aid (such as appeals before the First Tier Tribunal), but we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do this in all cases.
There are also various situations in which there is no right of appeal in respect of a decision in relation to welfare benefits, or regarding a policy or rule implemented by a local authority or the Department of Work and Pensions.
In these cases, the only way in which a decision can be challenged is by way of a claim for Judicial Review.
We have set out more detail on this in the FAQs section below. However, as Osbornes Law has a public law contract, as well as a Welfare Benefits contract, we are in a strong position to be able to assist clients by bringing Judicial Review claims in relation to welfare benefits issues in appropriate cases.
How to appeal a decision
In most cases, if you disagree with a decision by a benefits agency, such as a local authority or the Department of Work and Pensions (“DWP”), you have one month in which to challenge the decision. The first stage is to ask the decision-maker to reconsider their decision (in cases involving the DWP this is called the “mandatory reconsideration” stage, and in Housing Benefit cases it is called a “revision”).
If you remain dissatisfied after this stage you will need to make an appeal. In most cases, the time limit for submitting an appeal is one month from the date of the mandatory reconsideration or revised decision.
You should keep a clear record of all correspondence and interaction with the body making decisions on your benefits. Ideally, this should all be in writing. In relation to Universal Credit, most interaction with the DWP will be through the online journal, which will provide a written record of what you and the DWP have said.
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