THANK YOU - but will DWP follow the Tribunal?

First of all, a very big THANK YOU for the support on the forum and the excellent guides.

My sister was only awarded 5 points at her initial assessment for PIP, increased to 7 points for daily living (i.e. still nothing) and 10 points for mobility (i.e. basic rate) on mandatory reconsideration, but was awarded ENHANCED RATE for both sections at our recent Tribunal and with the comment that "it would be inappropriate to set a term" on both parts of PIP.

For anyone facing a Tribunal, our board were very well-prepared, had clearly read our submissions and at the hearing were very gentle with us, giving my sister time to answer the questions (she has a brain injury so can be slow in processing information). Although the paperwork looks and feels intimidating, please be encouraged that you can do it.

As my sister's abilities vary day to day, we found the PIP Diary as suggested in you guide very helpful - we did one immediately after the initial assessment and the Tribunal commented that this was very helpful in showing them what the picture was at that time.

My current query is that, the day before the Tribunal, we received a letter to say that my sister was to be re-assessed for PIP as we were now 18 months from her initial assessment (yes, the whole process did take that long). After the Tribunal, I phoned DWP to say what the Tribunal decision was, but was simply told that the case would need to be reviewed as the DWP had 28 days to appeal. We have now had the letter through setting the assessment date for next week. It doesn't appear that the DWP have appealed - do they have to follow the Tribunal decision (particularly on not setting a term)? Is this just a case of the paperwork not catching up with where we are? I don't really want to put my sister through the whole assessment thing again if we don't need to - last time it fatigued her so much that she was ill for days afterwards.

Bev