26% of Our Applications Are Initially Rejected. Here's Why We Think That's a Good Thing to Admit.

We use technology to check every application we submit before it goes anywhere near the DWP — cross-referencing the evidence gathered, checking consistency across every answer, and flagging anything a decision maker is likely to query. Even so, 26% of the Attendance Allowance and Pension Credit applications we submit on a client's behalf are initially rejected. We think that number is worth publishing, not hiding, because of what happens next.

Why a well-prepared application still gets turned down

A rejection doesn't always mean the case was weak. Sometimes the DWP asks for a specific piece of medical evidence that takes weeks to arrive from a GP surgery. Sometimes a decision maker interprets an answer more narrowly than the evidence actually supports. Sometimes a client's circumstances have moved on slightly between the application being submitted and being assessed, and the paperwork needs to catch up. Whatever the reason, when one of our applications comes back rejected, our job isn't finished — it's just moved into a different phase of work.

What we do next — at no extra cost

When an application we've submitted is rejected, we go back through it, work out exactly what the DWP said was missing or unclear, and — where a client agrees it's worth pursuing — go back to them for clarification, gather any further evidence, and resubmit the case for a Mandatory Reconsideration. This is genuinely more work than a first-time application: more calls, more evidence-chasing, more time spent reading a decision letter line by line. We don't charge a penny more for any of it. Our fee is agreed up front as a no-win, no-fee arrangement for the outcome, not for the number of rounds it takes us to get there.

The result: 96% of Mandatory Reconsiderations we pursue are upheld

Of every case where a client instructs us to proceed to a Mandatory Reconsideration, 96% are upheld — the original decision is overturned in the client's favour. It's rarely instant: because the DWP has no statutory deadline for completing a Mandatory Reconsideration, this usually takes several weeks, sometimes longer, of it sitting in a queue. But the outcome, once it lands, is the same story again and again: a case we believed in from the start, that just needed someone to keep pushing after the first "no".

We only take on cases we genuinely believe in — and we don't get paid a penny more for the extra work a rejection creates. That's the point of no-win, no-fee: the incentive to keep going is built in, not billed separately.

How that compares with the national picture

We think our figures are worth reading alongside the DWP's own published statistics, because the contrast is exactly why we think this kind of support has real value:

• Nationally, only around 22–25% of PIP Mandatory Reconsiderations result in a changed decision (DWP Personal Independence Payment statistics, data covering October 2024 to July 2025) — compared with the 96% success rate we see on the cases we take forward.
• The DWP has no legal deadline for completing a Mandatory Reconsideration. Its own most recently published average processing time was around 75 days — roughly two and a half months of waiting, on top of however long the original decision took.
• Independent research by the advice charity Advicenow found that the majority of people who eventually win a PIP claim were originally rejected at the Mandatory Reconsideration stage too — persistence past that first "no" is very often what separates a successful claim from an abandoned one.
• Advice organisations including Citizens Advice, Disability Rights UK and welfare rights forums consistently report that a significant share of people who are refused a disability or pension-age benefit never take the decision any further at all — not because they weren't entitled, but because the process itself, done alone, is confusing, slow and genuinely exhausting to face without support.

The gap our 96% figure is really about

That last point is the one we think matters most. The DWP's own numbers show that Mandatory Reconsiderations succeed a minority of the time nationally — and separately, advice organisations report that a large proportion of rejected claimants simply don't pursue one at all. Put those two facts together, and the honest reality is that a meaningful number of genuinely entitled people give up somewhere between the first rejection letter and a resolved claim. Our 96% figure isn't a claim that Mandatory Reconsiderations are easy, or that the DWP gets it wrong most of the time — it's specifically about what happens to the cases we've already vetted, built a genuine evidence case for, and chosen to keep pushing on someone's behalf, rather than letting a rejection be the end of the story.

Why this is worth knowing before you choose who to trust with your claim

If a service only ever talks about how many applications it gets right first time, ask what happens to the ones it doesn't. Some services quietly move on once a claim is refused, because chasing a Mandatory Reconsideration is extra work with no extra fee attached. We publish this figure because we think it's the more honest measure of value: not just how good we are at getting it right first time, but what we do — and what it costs you — when we don't.