Compensation from DWP for mobility car

jandavis

Tribunal appeal reinstated my higher rate mobility, but due to delay between mobility car being taken and tribunal appeal I was forced to purchase the car and I am out of pocket by around £9k. I can't get another motability car for 6 months. Does anyone know if I can claim compensation from DWP?

Sam_Alumni

Hi @jandavis welcome to the community, I have moved your post to the ask a benefits advisor category so hopefully you can get some advice on this soon.

BenefitsTrainingCo

Hi jandavis,

The point where you usually get compensation is at the point of the original PIP decision. It's possible to get compensation from Motability at that point. They have recently changed the scheme, but it's likely that at the time this all happened to you it was as follows:

£2,000 if you were on the scheme prior to January 2013
£1000 if you started a lease agreement between Jan 2013 and Dec 2013.

The compensation scheme changed on 20th April 2017 so I'm assuming the new arrangements don't apply to you, but you can read about them here, just in case.

Regarding other compensation though, you could also consider a complaint against the DWP and/or the assessment company. This would have to focus on their poor decision making/assessing. For example, if the DWP had all the information they needed to make a correct decision, and still made a wrong one, then arguably they have caused you all this expense. It's useful when you're making a complaint to detail the expenses and how they occurred (but it may be that you have to take off the compensation you were entitled to from Motability - or complain to them if they didn't offer it to you!)

Here's a link to the DWP complaints system.

Will