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Claiming DLA - 8

 

SECTION 2— The Cooking Test (DLA ONLY)

As previously explained, the page that relates to difficulties with cooking a main meal only appears on DLA forms and is treated separately to the rest of your claim. If you are over 16 and ‘pass’ the Cooking Test (or should that be fail?!) in the DWP’s eyes, then it will lead to an automatic award of the Lower Rate of the Care Component of DLA. Historically—before the DWP accepted that encouraging someone to get out of a chair was just as much ‘help’ as physically assisting them to get it— it meant that people who didn’t qualify on supervisory grounds often had to turn to the cooking test as their only route to benefit.  

It’s still important though to consider and describe all the difficulties you have preparing a main meal here. The ‘main meal’ in question is defined by case-law as a labour intensive, main daily mean for one person - neither a celebration meal nor a snack. It should be considered in the context of preparation on/in a conventional cooker, not re-heating something in the microwave.  I feel so low I just can’t make myself do it  I just do ‘convenience’ things My concentration is so bad that I can’t get things ready at the same time I forget I’ve got things on I let things burn/ there have been fires/ I burn myself I can’t plan what to eat, let alone cook I try cooking in the middle of the night and end up leaving things on.

At the time of writing, unlike other bits of DLA, case-law now says that you DON’T need to have difficulties preparing a main meal lost days to qualify under the Cooking Test but as the Government are currently challenging this, things may change!  

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