A CINDERFORD woman has taken on the Department for Work and Pensions – and won.

Sophie Allen, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2015, has won an appeal against the government department after being refused Personal Independence Payments (PIP) in the summer.

Sophie said: “After the initial struggle of being newly diagnosed with a lifelong illness and receiving no support, I started to apply for PIP in January 2016.

“It was a horrible process. You have to be assessed which is very demoralising and from a personal point of view, pointless. I was asked lots of irrelevant questions about my education, what food I liked and my house. I was denied the benefit, as if it’s not bad enough that I’m 35 years-old and walk up the road like I’m drunk, with my three children, because of my condition. It added insult to injury.

“I carried on the pursuit of help, as I’ve had to cut down my working hours but we still have bills to pay. I asked the Department for Work and Pensions to reconsider their decision. They still refused to give me any help and I was told if I didn’t agree with the decision I had to appeal, which involved going to court.

“They tried at every turn to trip me up and put me off going through the appeal, but I felt that it was an injustice, so I kept going. I had my appeal a few weeks ago. I sat in front of three professional ladies, who had no bias and asked me questions. They were very good, they just wanted to hear my side of the story. I had nobody to represent me, just the support of my husband.

“The result was that I won the appeal. I’d say to anyone in a similar position, if you feel you have been treated unfairly, you have the right to appeal. I would like to say a massive thank you to everybody that has supported me and passed on their well wishes in the street after they saw my story in the Review.”

The MS society is running a campaign, called MS: Enough, which Sophie says aims to make the welfare system make sense for people with the neurological condition.