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The IPCAS procedure
The procedure has been designed to be as quick and as cost-effective as possible.
The following pages explain how you should apply to use IPCAS, and what type of evidence you will need to give the adjudicator.
Stage 1
By now you will have been through the company’s own complaints procedure and we or the company will have given you these guidance notes and an ‘Application to use the Independent Property Codes Adjudication Scheme’.
You should now fill in the application form and send it to us within three months of the last reply from the company. This will be when the company last wrote to you or spoke to you and confirmed that the case could not be settled and was closed.
If you need more information or help to fill in the form, phone us on 020 7520 3800.
It is important that you fill in the application form as carefully as possible and provide any documents to support your case. In order to make a decision, the adjudicator will read and rely on the information you provide.
Stage 2
When we receive your form we will send a copy to the company.
The company will then have 14 working days to reply. (The company’s reply is known as their ‘defence to claim’.) In their defence to claim they will need to consider all of the points you have made, and give their response. The company can ask for more time to reply, and we may give them up to seven extra days.
If the company’s defence to claim does not disagree with or defend any point you raised in your application, the adjudicator will assume that they have accepted that particular point. If the company does not reply at all, the adjudicator will make a decision based only on what you have said.
Stage 3
When we receive the company’s defence to claim, we will send you a copy for you to add any final comments. You do not have to provide any comments if you do not want to, but if you want to you must provide them within seven working days of receiving a copy of the company’s defence to claim.
If you do provide comments, they must concentrate on any points the company made. You cannot add new information that you forgot to mention earlier.
We will send a copy of your comments to the company, but they do not automatically have the right to reply to them. If they want to reply, they must phone us immediately.
The adjudicator will decide whether or not the company can reply. He or she will also decide whether you can comment on their reply.
Stage 4
We will appoint an adjudicator either when we receive your comments, or at the end of the seven working day deadline. We will tell you and the company who the adjudicator is.
Within 14 working days of receiving all the information and follow-up comments from you and the company, the adjudicator will publish his or her decision. That decision and the reasons for it will be set out in a document. The decision is not binding on you, but it is binding on the company if you accept it.
Flowchart of a typical case >
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