Anger over discrimination solicitor whose failings ‘amplified distress’, as he is fined £9K
A high-profile solicitor who has spear-headed hundreds of disability discrimination court cases has been fined thousands of pounds after a tribunal found his actions failed to maintain “public trust” in the legal profession.
Chris Fry has for years been one of the only solicitors willing to take cases on behalf of disabled people who have faced discrimination in access to goods and services – particularly during the pandemic – and Disability News Service (DNS) has reported on many of them.
But his failings are believed to have led to the collapse of many other cases that were being taken by disabled people who trusted him to seek justice on their behalf for the discrimination they had experienced.
Fry’s law firm, Fry Law, collapsed two years ago and was placed into administration amid multiple complaints about significant administrative failings.
Following the collapse, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) launched an investigation which ended with Fry facing allegations last week in front of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
Four of those seven allegations were found “proven” by the tribunal, which imposed a £9,000 fine, and ordered Fry to pay £35,000 in costs.
The allegations found proven included that he had provided misleading or inaccurate information to an insurance broker; that he wrongly used money from his firm’s clients account to help run Fry Law; and that he breached SRA regulations in the way he ran his firm.
He was found to have acted in a way that failed to uphold public trust and confidence in the legal profession, but he was not found to have breached SRA’s principles on acting with honesty and integrity.
Although he will be able to continue working as a solicitor, the tribunal imposed a three-year restriction order on the management responsibilities he is allowed to carry out.
An SRA spokesperson has so far declined to say if Fry is facing any other ongoing investigations, although he confirmed that SRA closed Fry Law earlier this year and seized its files because of ongoing concerns*.
DNS is aware of a series of cases in which disabled people claim that Fry’s administrative failings have led to the collapse of their discrimination claims.
He has previously admitted administrative problems at Fry Law in the run-up to it being placed into administration, and has told DNS that there were “definitely cases that haven’t been worked on as proactively as I want”.
But he has yet to apologise to the disabled people he has failed, and he has previously attempted to blame others for what happened.
This week, disabled campaigner Doug Paulley, who Fry acted for in the ground-breaking case he took against FirstGroup – which saw the Supreme Court establish a key principle on access to buses for wheelchair-users – said he was “very sad” about what had happened.
He said it was irresponsible of Fry to take on more cases than he could cope with, the result of a system that makes it difficult for solicitors to take on such cases, which left him one of the only lawyers in the country that would consider them.
Paulley said Fry was responsible “for the many tens of disabled people whose cases were not progressed or whose court deadlines were passed, dooming their cases and amplifying the distress of the original discrimination”.
He said: “So many people have been hurt, and I’m so sad, and angry.”
He said Fry could be “amazing” when he was “on form”, as he was with the FirstGroup case and another successful discrimination case he took against York Barbican theatre a decade ago.
But Paulley said that on at least three occasions – across two of his cases – he had experienced serious administrative failings by Fry, while he had also heard from “a very lot of his other clients about how his administrative failures have impacted their cases and them”.
He said the “limited” tribunal case last week did not deal with the most important concerns about Fry’s failings, which were his “repeated letting down of so many disabled people, individually, financially, morally and our collective causes”.
He said Fry’s repeated failings and his refusal to admit those failings and make changes or seek help with the way he ran his business – and then continuing to fail other disabled people – was “irresponsible and caused huge emotional and financial cost to discriminated-against disabled people”.
He said the tribunal case showed the government needed to make changes to ensure the Equality Act was enforceable “in a meaningful way”, but he added: “I’m very sad that Chris Fry has let so many people down, and had such a massive impact on so many disabled people’s money, causes and mental and emotional health.
“No tribunal can ever repair that.”
Rachel George was another of those raising concerns about Fry this week.
Fry acted for her disabled son in two disability discrimination cases and was holding £5,000 of her son’s compensation from one of them. But since the collapse of Fry Law she has been unable to access that money.
Fry’s errors also led to her son being asked to pay the defendant’s £9,000 costs in the other case, because the court had not received an important document from Fry Law. Fry eventually agreed to pay most of the family’s costs, while the rest was met by crowdfunding.
She said: “The outcome of the tribunal does not feel like justice.
“The fine is relatively small, with a relatively short time that he will have limits on the roles he can take on within a firm.
“Whilst disabled people are left worrying as to whether they will get their money back, and feeling let down by their solicitor and by the justice system.
“I’d like the SRA to look into how he handled cases, and where things went wrong due to paperwork not being filed correctly, or things not being actioned within the set time frame.
“Because there are a number of people who feel very let down by his handling of their cases.”
She said she was concerned that Fry would now be able to take on more discrimination cases and would end up letting more disabled people down because of his failure to act professionally.
Fry told DNS in a text message this morning (Thursday) that he was “genuinely very sorry that people have ended up unhappy”, but he appeared to be referring to cases that could not be completed due to the firm collapsing in 2021 rather than as a result of his earlier administrative failings.
He had not commented further by noon today.
*The decision was taken “to protect the interests of clients and former clients of the firm and/or the interests of the beneficiaries of any trust of which the firm is or was a trustee”
15 June 2023
DWP’s ‘shocking’ refusal to allow benefit appeal for woman who was sectioned
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is refusing to help a disabled woman who was unable to appeal against the rejection of her disability benefit claim because she had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Dee Daniels was left “pauperised” when her personal independence payment (PIP) application was rejected in 2018, leaving her without enough money to pay for her rent, food and bills.
The process caused her such distress and trauma that she had a relapse and “dropped off the radar”, stopped taking her medication and “roamed the streets aimlessly”.
She believes she could easily have ended up as another DWP fatality but was eventually sectioned and received inpatient treatment in hospital, where she developed a pulmonary embolism in both lungs and nearly died.
During this time, she had failed to ask DWP for a mandatory reconsideration (MR) of her claim as she was too unwell to deal with any correspondence.
When she was eventually well enough to seek the benefits she was owed, DWP told her she had missed the 13-month deadline for an MR and refused to reconsider that decision, despite being told that she had been in such mental distress that she had been sectioned.
Daniels had been a long-term claimant of disability living allowance before being told to apply for PIP in 2018 by DWP.
But following a face-to-face assessment by the private sector contractor Atos, a DWP decision-maker awarded her zero points and stopped her benefits in November 2018, even though she continued to receive employment and support allowance (ESA) as she was not considered fit for work.
It was not until she was finally assessed months later in hospital after being sectioned, and was found to be destitute, that she reapplied for PIP in September 2019.
She was rejected again, but she was finally awarded PIP at the enhanced rates for daily living and mobility after a mandatory reconsideration, and she was again awarded the highest rates when re-assessed last November.
But because she never had a mandatory reconsideration of the rejection of her initial PIP claim, she is now unable to take her case to a benefit tribunal for repayment of the PIP she did not receive between November 2018 and September 2019.
Daniels said her case highlighted the “unfairness” of the system, and she believes that DWP has discriminated against her as someone with mental distress, and a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and other impairments.
She is still in debt now, and she is seeking a welfare rights expert to help her claim the money she believes she is entitled to*.
She told Disability News Service (DNS): “I feel very let down by the system and discriminated against.
“Had it not been for the nurses at the hospital who helped me apply for PIP again, I probably would not be receiving it now.”
She said DWP had failed to explain how in 2018 she was eligible for the ESA support group but not for any PIP.
She said: “When I scored zero for PIP I felt crushed and abandoned.
“I was so stressed, depressed, full of anxiety and fear as my debts mounted that I couldn’t cope.
“Eventually I had a relapse, was hospitalised, and developed a pulmonary embolism in both lungs.
“I nearly died, had to be resuscitated by doctors in accident and emergency and spent months in hospital.
“The nature of my illness, it makes it so difficult to deal with correspondence, DWP forms and processes.
“I’m still recovering, deeply anxious and afraid.”
Her case was taken up by her MP, Labour’s Wes Streeting, who wrote to the department.
The then minister for disabled people, Claire Coutinho, told Streeting in her response to his letter last October that the time limit for MRs can be extended if the DWP decision is “erroneous in law” but she insisted that that was not the case with Daniels’ claim and so there was “no right of appeal”.
She added: “I can assure you that it is not doubted that there had been a deterioration in Miss Daniels’ mental health.
“However, decisions have to be made on the basis of the evidence presented at a point in time, with subsequent changes considered accordingly.”
She said there had to be MR time limits “to ensure that the Department has an effective decision-making process” and so the November 2018 decision “will not be reconsidered”.
Streeting told Daniels that he was “shocked and frustrated” with the department’s refusal to “exercise the discretion that is very clearly required in your case”.
He added: “The very reasons you qualify for PIP today show that you could not have been expected to meet the deadline, and I am stunned that the Minister has not accepted this.”
A DWP spokesperson told DNS: “We have nothing to add to the correspondence from the minister which sets out the case details.”
*If any welfare rights organisation can help with her claim, please contact Disability News Service
15 June 2023
Rail industry has grown used to failing every day on access, MPs hear
The rail industry has no awareness of just how badly it is failing disabled passengers every day, a leading access consultant has told MPs.
Christiane Link, a consultant and adviser on accessibility to the aviation and transport industry for more than 20 years, told a Commons committee yesterday (Wednesday) that rail companies had grown used to how frequently their assisted travel services failed disabled passengers.
She said: “The industry is used to these failed assists. There is no awareness anymore that this is not OK… it happens every single day. Staff members are used to it.”
She added: “We have to change the culture in the industry from the top down.
“The Department for Transport must give a clear message that this is not acceptable anymore and that there will be severe issues if this doesn’t stop.”
Link, a wheelchair-user, was one of four leading disabled campaigners who were taking part in the first oral evidence session of an inquiry by the transport select committee into accessible transport and the industry’s legal obligations.
She said she had previously considered herself to be “a bit unlucky” because of the number of times she was let down by the assisted travel service.
But she added: “When I joined the railway industry, my biggest surprise was how bad the situation really is.
“I always considered myself a bit unlucky… and then I saw really inside how bad the situation is.”
She said senior figures in train companies had a responsibility to say they would no longer accept “failed assists”, as disabled people have a right to travel.
Alan Benson, a disabled activist and campaigner, chair of Transport for All and founder member of the Campaign for Level Boarding, told the committee that he had been forced to pull the passenger alarm three times on trains in the last three months because of a failure of assistance.
He said: “For me, a journey is going to go wrong. I expect something to go wrong. It’s just how badly it goes wrong.”
Benson, also a wheelchair-user, said transport operators felt it was easier to “pay us compensation and get us to go away than to actually fix the issues”.
He said: “So many disabled people put up with appalling service because they just don’t know that they are entitled to more and they don’t know where to go to complain.
“Most disabled people don’t want money, they don’t want compensation, they want to get things fixed.”
He told the committee: “Until we treat accessibility like we treat health and safety, it’s not going to change.”
Link agreed and said she believed that “accessibility is a health and safety and rights issue which should be enforced”.
She said the rail industry was still buying trains that were the wrong size for the tracks, which meant there was a “massive step” between the train and the platform and “massive gaps”.
She said: “It affects so many disabled people. Blind people are falling into the gaps and so on. It’s a health and safety issue.
“There are constantly incidents. It’s an open secret in railway that there are accidents happening, that people injure themselves.”
All four of the witnesses spoke of the failure to enforce access and discrimination laws.
Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson, a crossbench peer, wheelchair-user and accessible transport campaigner, said there was “a complete failure to enforce” laws on accessible travel.
She said: “We’re constantly told, ‘It will never happen again, it’s just you [this is happening to], we’re really sorry,’ and we’re expected to go away.”
She said the Disability Discrimination Act had promised accessible rail travel by 2020, but the government was now suggesting it would be 100 years before there was step-free access.
She said: “So in my lifetime I will not be able to get on a train without the permission or support of a non-disabled person.”
Both she and Link highlighted concerns that Network Rail was building new inaccessible footbridges.
Baroness Grey-Thompson said: “How can Network Rail build a footbridge that has steps, in this day and age? How did it get through?”
They also both highlighted the need to roll out new trains that provide level access from the platform to the carriage.
Accessibility campaigner Stephen Anderson said he has been refused service by private hire vehicles 43 times because he was travelling with his guide dog.
He said: “The problem is with these regulators there’s no teeth, there’s absolutely no teeth.
“Enough of this awareness stuff; we actually need something to happen and for it to be loud and clear from the highest echelons of government that this is totally unacceptable, we are not going to stand for it, and the sooner we can get to that position the better.”
He has successfully taken legal cases against 20 private hire drivers, with another 23 cases waiting to be heard, while he has settled five or six other cases across the transport sector.
Link said there needed to be a plan to make the country’s railway system accessible.
She said: “If you don’t have a plan how to make this country’s railway system accessible, you will never achieve that.”
Baroness-Grey-Thompson said the government’s Inclusive Transport Strategy was “just another strategy, and disabled people are slightly bored by strategies”.
She told the committee: “For me, the government needs to take equal access seriously. We need action and investment.”
15 June 2023
DWP finally admits nearly all its websites were rated ‘very high risk’ on access
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has finally admitted that nearly all its high-profile websites were rated as being inaccessible to many disabled people and potentially breaking the law.
It has taken more than a year – and intervention from the information commissioner – to force DWP to release the information to Disability News Service (DNS) about the department’s own concerns about the accessibility of its websites and other digital services.
Among the websites described as “very high risk” by DWP civil servants were its Understanding Universal Credit and Disability Confident sites.
The “Become a DWP Workcoach” site was also described as very high risk, with the added warning that the access issues could lead to a disabled person taking an “Equality Act” legal action “due to the fact it’s recruitment”.
DWP’s Understanding Universal Credit website was said to have failed screen-reader testing, speech recognition testing and magnifier testing.
Another site described as “very high risk” and non-compliant was the website for contacting the DWP ministerial correspondence team.
Of 18 DWP websites, only two were said to comply with the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018, which came into force in September 2018, nearly five years ago, with the other 16 all seen as “very high risk”.
But DWP is likely to have been relieved that one of the two websites that was considered compliant with the regulations was its “Contact DWP about accessibility” website.
Cabinet Office guidance warns that public sector bodies like DWP that do not ensure their websites or apps meet accessibility requirements “may be breaking the law”.
In all, of the 56 public-facing DWP digital services that were not due to be decommissioned, only 24 were said to be compliant with the regulations.
Of 62 staff-facing digital services that were not due to be decommissioned, only 13 were said to be compliant.
But the report also revealed that many of the digital services available only to staff were at “high risk” over their accessibility.
The “personal independence payment assessment tool” was reported as “high risk” and “critical”.
The personal independence payment (PIP) computer system – which appears to be set up to help contractors such as Atos and Capita carry out PIP assessments – was also said to be “high risk” and “critical”, while progress towards compliance was described as zero per cent.
The report said there were “probably limitations on what is possible” with the existing PIP computer system, although it will be replaced by 2025.
It added: “Badged as high risk due to incidents with staff being unable to work due to the system not working for them.”
Although all six of the universal credit digital services were said to be compliant with the regulations, not one of the nine digital services used by staff in the working-age benefits section was said to be compliant with the regulations.
Among those said to be at “high risk” was the “decision maker appeals case recorder”, while the “job seekers allowance payment system” was said to be at high risk and “critical”.
Progress on making the job seekers allowance payment system compliant with the regulations was said to be at zero per cent.
A series of DWP arms-length bodies were said to have non-compliant websites, including the Health and Safety Executive, The Pensions Advisory Service, The Pensions Ombudsman and The Pensions Regulator.
The reports date from April 2022, so the accessibility status of many of the websites and other digital services is likely to have changed in the last 14 months.
Last year, DWP refused to release the full reports, providing DNS with only headline details of the compliance failures, which did not show which websites and other services were failing on accessibility.
DWP claimed at the time that the report was exempt from being released under section 35 of the Freedom of Information Act because it “relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
But after DNS complained to the information commissioner, DWP has now apologised and admitted that the exemption was “wrongly applied”.
It told DNS that the reports were “a snapshot in time” and that some services were marked as non-compliant because the department had no evidence they had been tested for accessibility.
It said the report was “not intended to be used for public accountability” and was “a working document to help us to move towards greater compliance”.
DNS has now submitted a fresh freedom of information request to seek up-to-date reports on the accessibility of DWP’s websites and other digital services.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said DWP’s “incorrect use of section 35 and late disclosure will be noted as part of the Commissioner’s ongoing consideration of DWP’s compliance with [the Freedom of Information Act]”.
DNS reported in March how DWP had been warned by the information commissioner for “systemically failing to comply with the law” over how it dealt with requests for information on disability benefits, universal credit and claimant deaths.
It found DWP had a “consistently poor level of performance” on handling requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act.
15 June 2023
Government admits to ‘limited’ understanding of home-based care abuse
The government has admitted it has a “limited” understanding of the abuse of disabled people at the hands of their carers and care workers in their own homes.
The government review calls for a “stronger” response to protect disabled and older people from the people who provide them with support at home.
The 86-page Safe Care at Home Review, which was published quietly this week, more than two years after ministers were pushed into carrying out the work by disabled peers, examines the gaps in the protection of adults who risk abuse in their own homes from paid and unpaid carers and care workers.
Among the evidence it heard was cases of disabled people being targeted and groomed to provide sexual favours or money to their carers or care workers.
But it also highlighted the lack of data on the prevalence of abuse in care relationships and found that what data is available is “poorly utilised”.
Data collected by the police on abuse in care relationships varies from force to force, while the Crown Prosecution Service reported “difficulties” in producing data on abuse and neglect within care relationships on its IT systems.
Coroners do not collect information on cases where there might have been a concern about care leading to a death in a person’s home, the review adds.
The government document admits: “This review shows that our understanding of the prevalence and nature of abuse in care relationships is limited.”
Home Office-funded research has previously found that one in six domestic abuse-related deaths involved carers or people receiving care.
The Safe Care at Home Review, which was led by the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and applies only to England, found there were “challenges” in detecting, reporting and investigating abuse in care relationships, with much of it likely to be “hidden from plain sight”.
This is often because the victims are dependent on their carers, have placed trust in them, or have been manipulated or even systematically groomed by the perpetrators, the review says.
Disabled people, their organisations and other experts consulted by the government – including police and social care organisations – said they believed there was a lack of national and local “oversight and accountability” for safeguarding.
They said it was “unclear who holds strategic oversight” for safeguarding adults with care and support needs, at both local and national levels, and that more needs to be done to “hold organisations and agencies to account” to ensure lessons are learned from safeguarding failures.
The review only came across one police force area with a team that was “solely focused on people with care and support needs”.
The review was also told that wider pressures on health and social care services were impacting a system that was already “fragile, under strain and facing difficulties in upholding safeguarding provisions for people with care and support needs”.
There were concerns about the “patchy” long-term funding for specialist support services run by user-led organisations, with a call from “stakeholders” for an increase in sustainable, multi-year investment.
Among its promised actions, the government says it will review key Care Act guidance, “identifying opportunities to clarify the roles and responsibilities of government departments and statutory agencies, and rights and redress for victims and survivors”.
It will also consider commissioning an analysis of past safeguarding adults reviews that have been linked to domestic abuse.
And it will “consider ways in which to incorporate the voices of victims and survivors in policy-making”.
The Home Office and DHSC also plan to consider how they can increase awareness among frontline staff of “the prevalence and signs of abuse of adults by people providing care in their own home”.
And they say they will work with other government departments and partners to “scope further research to better understand this form of abuse in line with the review’s findings”.
In an introduction to the review, care minister Helen Whately writes: “We know that the issues highlighted in the report will not be fixed quickly or easily; this report is the start of a journey to highlight and tackle these issues.”
The government only agreed to carry out the review after refusing to extend protections included in its domestic abuse bill to disabled people abused in their homes by paid care workers and personal assistants, and friends and neighbours who carry out unpaid caring duties.
Attempts to extend those protections had been led in the Lords by Baroness [Jane] Campbell and another disabled crossbench peer, Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson.
But after securing cross-party support in the Lords, their amendments were overturned by MPs, with the junior Home Office minister Victoria Atkins promising instead “a review of the protections for people at risk of carer abuse”.
The bill became the Domestic Abuse Act in May 2021, without their amendments.
Baroness Campbell told peers at the time: “Carer abuse – as evidenced throughout the pandemic and during earlier debates and pre-legislative scrutiny – must not continue unchecked.
“Disabled people deserve to have equivalent protection – no less.”
She later told Disability News Service: “I pushed for the amendment largely to shine a light on this very hidden menace, which blights the lives of disabled people.”
Baroness Campbell and Baroness Grey-Thompson were not available to comment on the new review.
15 June 2023
DWP finally publishes long-awaited universal credit ‘fitness for work’ stats
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has finally published its first set of figures that show how many disabled people who receive universal credit are being found fit for work after an assessment.
It has taken more than four years for ministers to make good on their promise to publish statistics showing how claimants of universal credit are dealt with by the work capability assessment (WCA) system.
Former DWP ministers such as Therese Coffey and Chloe Smith repeatedly argued that it would be too expensive to produce official statistics showing how many disabled claimants of universal credit have been put through the WCA, what level of benefit they received following their assessment, and how many were being found fit for work.
The Office for Statistics Regulation told DWP last year – following a complaint by Disability News Service – that its failure to publish universal credit WCA statistics left “a gap in the information available” and that there was a “wealth of evidence around the need for transparency around Universal Credit WCA statistics”.
The first set of the quarterly “experimental” figures dates back only to April 2019, but it shows that a total of 1.9 million universal credit WCA decisions had been made by February 2023.
Of those decisions, 16 per cent found claimants were fit for work, with 19 per cent of claimants found to have limited capability for work (LCW), and 65 per cent said to have limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA), the equivalent of the employment and support allowance (ESA) support group.
The figures show significant monthly fluctuations in the proportion of those found fit for work, particularly during the pandemic.
In April 2019, just 12 per cent of claimants who were put through a WCA were found fit for work, but three months later that had risen to 25.5 per cent.
At the height of the second wave of the pandemic, in January 2021, just 2.1 per cent of claimants were found fit for work after a paper-based or telephone assessment.
The latest month’s figures, for February 2023, show 63.8 per cent of claimants were found to have LCWRA, and 16.6 per cent were fit for work.
Meanwhile, the latest figures showing the results of initial WCAs for ESA claimants show 65 per cent were placed in the support group, 12 per cent placed in the work-related activity group, and 22 per cent found fit for work, in the three months to December 2022.
Professor Ben Baumberg Geiger, from King’s College London, who has spent 15 years researching the disability benefits system, wrote in a blog that DWP’s previous failure to publish the figures had made it “almost impossible to understand what has been happening to benefits disability assessments over the past few years”.
He said it was “astonishing” that it had taken so long to publish them.
He put the new universal credit figures together with the latest ESA statistics and showed that the proportion of all claimants found fit for work after a WCA had fallen by between 15 and 20 percentage points since 2014-18, when it was between 30 and 40 per cent.
Since mid-2021, he says, the proportion of ESA and universal credit claimants found fit for work after a WCA has been “steady” at about 15 to 20 per cent.
Further figures on universal credit claimants and WCAs will be released in phases, including information on decisions according to conditions and impairments, outcomes of mandatory reconsiderations and appeals, and clearance times.
Asked if ministers were content with the proportion of disabled people found fit for work under the universal credit WCA system, a DWP spokesperson declined to comment.
But the spokesperson said in a statement: “We recognise the limitations of the work capability assessment in assessing people’s potential, which is why we set out radical reforms at the budget to scrap the assessments completely.
“We know that one in five people on an incapacity-related benefit would like to work at some point in the future, but fewer than one in a hundred move into employment every month.
“Our changes will ensure the system focuses on what people can do rather than on what they cannot and give disabled people the confidence to try work without the worry of losing their benefits.”
Disabled campaigners have raised serious concerns about the government’s plans to scrap the WCA, which will hand responsibility for deciding if a disabled person has to carry out work-related activity to work coaches, who would be likely to have no healthcare qualifications.
Meanwhile, the latest figures from the tribunal service show that, between January and March 2023, 68 per cent of personal independence payment appeals found in favour of the claimant.
The proportion of successful appeals peaked at 80 per cent in the first quarter of 2020-21 but has generally been at about 70 per cent, or higher, since 2018.
15 June 2023
PIP telephone waiting-times continue to rise, DWP figures show
Waiting-times on a benefit enquiry line have continued to rise, despite the minister for disabled people promising that his department was recruiting extra staff to bring them down.
In April, Tom Pursglove admitted that the average waiting time in March for the personal independence payment (PIP) telephone enquiry line was 37 minutes.
He told Labour’s Beth Winter on 26 April that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was “currently experiencing higher than forecast call volumes to the PIP and DLA telephony enquiry lines” and had “recruited additional staff onto our telephony teams”, while there was “on-going recruitment to further increase resources”.
But Disability News Service has secured new figures from DWP which show that waiting-times have continued to rise.
In January, the “average speed of answer” was 23 minutes; in February, it rose to 31 minutes; and in March, it increased to 37 minutes and one second, before increasing by nearly two minutes in April, to 38 minutes and 50 seconds.
These are just average waiting-times, so many claimants will have experienced much longer waits.
DNS reported last month how disabled people were describing “disgraceful” and stressful waiting-times on the PIP enquiry line.
They described how they were facing “exhausting” waits that were more than twice as long as the average figures quoted by Pursglove in parliament, and were also having to cope with malfunctioning software that cut them off as they tried to navigate DWP’s automated voice-response technology.
One disabled woman said she was on hold for about 80 minutes while she waited for a conversation about her PIP claim that lasted just three minutes.
Another said she had had to wait as long as 90 minutes to speak to a DWP adviser.
Waiting-times for the employment and support allowance enquiry line have also continued to increase, and are now more than double where they were six months ago, according to the new DWP figures, although they are still at a much lower level than PIP waiting-times.
In November 2022, the average speed of answer on the ESA enquiry line was more than six minutes, rising to eight minutes in January, 13 minutes in March, and more than 14 minutes in April.
Asked if Pursglove was concerned that waiting-times, particularly on the PIP line, were continuing to rise, and why his efforts to address the increases did not appear to be working, a DWP spokesperson refused to comment.
This is now the third time the department has refused to comment about the PIP telephone enquiry line waiting-times.
Instead, DWP offered a near-identical statement to the one released a month ago, which again did not refer to telephone waiting-times.
The spokesperson said: “Reducing customer journey times is a priority for the department and we are making constant improvements to our service, including expanding dedicated teams and using telephone and video appointments to make the process faster and to deliver a more efficient, user-centred service.”
Meanwhile, the Benefits and Work website has published figures obtained from DWP via a freedom of information request which show nearly half a million callers to the PIP helpline in April were deliberately disconnected by the department before they could even wait in a queue.
Benefits and Work said in its report: “The proportion of calls cut-off before entering the queue is now greater than the proportion who even get to wait for an hour or more before giving up or getting disconnected.”
It added: “The worry is that the DWP is now in a downward spiral of increasingly awful customer service.”
15 June 2023
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Disabled people are among those hardest hit by rising energy bills, new research shows. A report by statutory consumer body Consumer Scotland found some disabled people are more likely to face additional costs, with potentially severe consequences for their health. In the case of energy, this includes the inability to pay for the charging of medical equipment, such as stairlifts, hospice beds, electric wheelchairs, ventilators, and hoists: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23581741.disabled-people-hardest-hit-rising-energy-bills/
Disability campaigners have criticised repairs to a footbridge that will make it inaccessible for wheelchairs and children’s buggies. City council cabinet members agreed to spend £1 million to fix Kingsweston Iron Bridge in Bristol, more than seven years after it was struck by a lorry. The work requires the Grade II listed structure to be raised by a metre to prevent another truck hitting it. But a ramp for people with mobility impairments was rejected: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-65857044
A blind man who fell on to rail tracks and was nearly hit by a freight train is suing Network Rail for failing to put in place tactile paving to protect him. Abdul Eneser, 20, says he fell on to the tracks at Manchester Piccadilly station as he was unable to feel where the platform edge was due to the lack of metal studs or adhesive tiles. He was also not provided with passenger assistance, due to a train delay: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/14/blind-man-who-fell-on-to-rail-tracks-sues-network-rail-over-lack-of-tactile-paving
A British Sign Language (BSL) GCSE is one step closer to being taught in schools as the government launches a consultation on its content. The government is aiming for the BSL GCSE to be first taught to pupils in England from September 2025. Views on the qualification – including the language skills to be studied and the role of history – are being sought from teachers, employers and the deaf and hearing communities in a 12-week consultation: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/department-for-education-british-gcse-government-british-sign-language-b2357804.html
15 June 2023
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
