Good to hear your payments have been reinstated. That and the letter you received from The Appeals Service confirms that your appeal WAS accepted. In relation to any further evidence you may be able to gather, it's entirely down to yourself whether you send that in. What I would say is that everything you send in to The Appeals Service is then forwarded to PIP who will look at the information and see if they can change their original decision as a result of it, so you may not need to go for a hearing. The Appeals service will now be waiting for the submissions to arrive from PIP. This is a large document (can be around 100+ pages) and contains PIPs case for their decision. This can take 8-12 weeks to arrive (although it can be much less). You will know when this has been done in two ways - 1 you will receive a copy of the submissions from PIP in the post (read it thoroughly and make notes of the parts you are challenging) and - 2 a few days after that you will get some papers from The Appeals Service asking how you want the case to be heard (ie if you plan on attending) and also a form asking for your consent for your medical records to be released and your GP details. Once you return those your case will be put into a queue to await a date of hearing.

you shouldn’t worry about your appeal not being accepted. PIP will always give a few days grace precisely because of the situation that you outline, but they don’t advertise it. It is 99.99999% that they will accept your appeal as being “in time”. The only reason that The Appeals Service would have written out to you to ask why your appeal was late is because they have to. The rules between PIP and The Appeals Service will say that if an appeal is outside of the 1 month then it is late and must be treated as such and there are procedures that must be followed whether the appeal is one day, one month or one year late, the same procedures apply so that everyone is treated equally. In the extremely unlikely event that PIP decide that your appeal is late and they don’t allow it, then your appeal would then be referred by The Appeals Service to one of their Legally Qualified panel members to make a final decision on whether the appeal should be accepted. His/her decision is final and if they accept it (which, given the circumstances as you’ve outlined them, they undoubtedly would), then PIP would be instructed to prepare their submissions and your appeal would lodged as Duly Made. The person you spoke to correctly told you that you could have handed in your form and that is true, but did not tell you where. They are situated in Cleaver House in the centre of Belfast (opposite City Hall, where the taxi rank is) and you can take any further papers etc. at any time throughout your appeal and hand it over to one of the staff who can also give you a receipt for your papers if you request it. Lastly, you should definitely get some help with your appeal. Citizens Advice, Citywide Tribunal Services or EBIAC spring to mind or you can go your local MLA and any can and will help you throughout the process. Good luck!