You cannot generally appeal straight away. You must first ask the decision maker to reconsider the decision, which you can do within one calendar month of the date of the decision letter. This is called a ‘mandatory reconsideration’.

However, you can appeal straight away if you want to challenge a decision that you do not have a limited capability for work for ESA and are eligible to claim ESA while you are appealing (see 18 below ). Because you cannot receive ESA while a mandatory reconsideration is being dealt with, you will want to appeal straight away in these circumstances. If you are claiming both ESA and universal credit and receive a decision that you do not have a limited capability for work on each benefit, although you can appeal the ESA decision straight away, you must first ask for a mandatory reconsideration of the universal credit decision. You can continue to get universal credit while your request for a mandatory