Numbers of appeals against income support decisions 2014 and related information (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the States Greffe and published on 13 March 2015.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

​​Request

A.

The total numbers of appeals lodged with the Registrar of Appeals and Tribunals during the calendar year 2014 against decisions of the Social Security Department in respect of Income Support and in respect of other benefits administered by the Social Security Department, with each type of benefit identified separately.

B.

Out of the total number of appeals lodged, as requested in (A) above, how many appeals, if any, were not accepted by the Chair or Deputy Chair of the Tribunal and therefore did not reach the stage of an independent appeal hearing held before either a Social Security or a Medical Appeals Tribunal panel?

C.

Out of the total number of such appeals lodged that were not accepted by the Chair or the Deputy Chair of the Tribunal, as requested in (B) above, what were the stated reasons given by the Chair or Deputy Chair for rejecting the appeals in each individual case?

Response

A.

During 2014 the following Appeals by benefit type were lodged with the Registrar:

Benefit Type	Number of Appeals
Income Support	20
Long Term Incapacity Allowance	11
Short Term Incapacity Allowance	1
Old Age Pension	2
Total	34

 

B.

From our records, there were no appeals rejected by the Chair/Deputy Chair in 2014.

C.

The Chair/Deputy Chair heard all cases which reached a hearing stage therefore this question does not apply. However, several appeals lodged failed to reach a hearing at all. In the interest of transparency these reasons for failure to reach a hearing are listed below:

Reason behind failure to reach a hearing	Number of Appeals
Premature appeal:  SSD redetermination not complete	4
Withdrawn: SSD redetermination in favour of appellant	4
Applicant decision to withdraw	3
Appeal lodged out of time limit allowed	1
File closed due to lack of response from appellant	1
Total	13

 This response has been issued on behalf of the States Greffe. The States Greffe is responsible for the information held by (and on behalf of) both itself and the States Assembly.  Neither the States Assembly nor the States Greffe form part of the Government of Jersey and the Government was not involved either in the examination and retrieval of any information required for this response, nor in the drafting of the response itself.