Judicial Review Into Benefits Delays Given Go-Ahead

A specialist lawyer at Irwin Mitchell has appeared on BBC Radio 4 to discuss her work on behalf of disabled people who have launched a legal challenge in relation to delays when applying to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for essential financial support.

Anne-Marie Irwin, an associate solicitor based in the national law firm’s London office, was talking to the In Touch programme about the High Court’s decision to grant permission to launch a judicial review regarding the Personal Independence Payments (PIP) scheme.

Introduced in April 2013, the DWP originally stated that the application process would take just two and a half months. However, figures have shown that more 300,000 of those who had applied from April 2013 were still awaiting news by the end of July 2014.

While Irwin Mitchell’s Public Law team has already successfully helped seven people to obtain decisions on PIP after launching legal action on their behalf, they have now launched a judicial review to help the many others affected.

Talking to In Touch on the issue, Anne-Marie said: “What the law says is that any decisions made by public bodies have to be taken within a reasonable amount of time, and our argument in this case is that the extent of the delays amount to unlawfulness.

“This isn’t a reasonable amount of time to expect people to wait when they have got a statutory entitlement to this benefit.”

Read more about Irwin Mitchell’s legal challenge of the PIP system.

Listen back to the interview on In Touch on BBC iPlayer.