OlennasWimple from everything I have heard and read, the process of getting a GRC is as nothing compared with claiming disability benefits.
GIRES have produced a short guide. Some extracts:
The civil servants work directly with the applicants and do an excellent job in assisting applicants to put their information together in the most favourable way.
If the panel views your application as completely acceptable they will issue a “decision” and the relevant certificate (interim or full) will be sent to you within two weeks of the panel date. If a full certificate is issued this office will, unless you have advised them you wish to do this yourself, inform HMRC, and arrange for a new birth certificate be issued by the General Register.
The GRP is definitely minded to grant applications, wherever legally possible, which is why directions are given rather than making final decisions which might not be in favour of the applicant. So despite the high rate of requests for further information very few applications actually fail outright. In most cases the issues are around information not being submitted correctly, the most common one of late being the stat dec form not being filled out correctly and/or not witnessed and signed in the prescence of someone qualified to do so.
Most years, over 90% of GRC applications are successful.
I agree there should be an appeal process but I have to wonder what sort of cases would be refused.
Every day I see jaw-droppingly cruel and stupid reasons for refusing PIP or ESA/UC. If I remember right, there's around a 60% success rate at appeal for PIP decisions. Far from being 'minded to grant applications' the DWP had a target to fail 20% of claimants when moving them from DLA to PIP and were forced to drop an 80% target to fail mandatory reconsiderations* in December last year.
And this isn't for a bit of paper that's pretty much obsolete in 2018, this is for money to eat, money for water and fuel, money to get about, money towards the bajillionty things that cost loads extra if you have a disability. And guess what? Unlike the GRP, the DWP doesn't handily keep everyone informed so if you lose your ESA you have to go to the council asap with a letter that says your ESA has been stopped but you're still poor and can't afford your rent so please don't stop housing benefit as well. But nobody tells you this so at best you end up in debt and at worst you end up homeless.
If you want to see 'humiliating and degrading' look no further than the hoops disabled people have to jump through just for bare subsistence. Look no further than your local food bank.
*Getting way off topic now but a mandatory reconsideration is a stage you have to go through before you can appeal a benefit decision. For claimants who have failed a work capability assessment, once your appeal request is accepted you will be paid ESA or UC at the assessment rate but while the MR thing is going on you have a choice of surviving on no money for an indefinite period or signing on and being treated as a regular jobseeker, with all the hoops and risks of sanctions that entails. There is no time limit for how long the DWP can take reconsidering a decision at the MR stage - the longest I have seen is 5 months. For many claimants, this is what forces them off the old benefits onto UC and, because they have put in the claim themselves, they are deemed to have 'naturally migrated' and so lose transitional protection (i.e. they are worse off even if they win at appeal).