We are unfortunately seeing a lot of these lately. The gentleman in question has severe mental health problems, and is currently in receipt of ESA, and was also being paid DLA, with a disability premium on top of that. However he was invited to switch over to PIP from DLA (claimants don’t have any choice in the matter, if you don’t accept the ‘invitation’ to switch, your DLA payments simply stop). This is what happened to this man, as he’d been given an appointment at a centre which was too far away for him to get to, so he requested a more suitable appointment at a closer location. Unfortunately he was simply registered as a ‘no show’ and so his payments stopped, the knock on of this happening is that his disability premium also stopped being paid, leaving him with just his ESA. He has fallen into debt and has been referred to our agent’s debt counselling team. He currently has no gas, or electricity, no food and his son goes back to school on Monday, and currently does not have any uniform that fits him. We agreed to send £100 to help him out until his next payment is due. Our agents are supporting him to get his appeal in for his PIP application.