ESA3 Sent Out following successful appeal? 

Good morning - I have a query regarding one of my appeal cases. The claimant had her ESA IR stopped in February 2020 as DWP has decided she had failed to disclose she was living with her partner. This resulted in a £10K overpayment of both ESA, IS (they went as far back as 2014/15). The DWPs case wasn’t particularly strong and the appeals were allowed. DWP have not challenged the decision and she is again in receipt of HB/CTR which had also been stopped following the DWP’s decision on ESA.

However, DWP have sent my client an ESA3 with no covering letter, which i am slightly suspicious of. When the appeal was allowed they should surely have simply reinstated ESA back to Feb 2020? I have phoned ESA helpline but just been told “she needs to fill it in to get her backdate”. There was no covering letter with the ESA3 to state the dates this was needed for.

So there are two possibilities, imo:
1. They simply need to know her circumstances since ESA stopped (ie is she still single/meets criteria etc etc)
or
2. They are trying to be difficult after a fairly painful loss and are perhaps hoping to “catch her out” or something similarly cynical.

Anyone else been in the same boat?

Door number one. Your client has not been on benefit for this period and will not have been reporting changes. Your client could have won the lottery between the date of decision and today and there would have been no reason or obligation for her to report this to the DWP. The Tribunal’s decision resolves the issue under appeal (i.e. that she was not LTAHW) but the decision does not provide enough information to finally establish entitlement for the period beyond the decision date. I don’t think its a particularly unusual request and they do often get sent out after appeals where there are still unanswered questions to resolve entitlement (e.g. LTAHW, HRT or capital cases)..