Most people do not receive a bad decision while sitting at a desk. The refusal letter arrives at the school gate. The eviction notice is read on the bus. The DWP text lands while you are at work with fifteen minutes left of your break.
By the time you get home, the day has taken what it takes, and the letter you meant to write does not get written. That is how time limited legal windows quietly close.
So we are planning a StatutoryLetters app. An app for the people. Not a companion app for a product, but a way to challenge a council, NHS trust, landlord or the DWP from your phone, in the moment you actually need to.
This is a fresh announcement. The app is planned and in development. It is not available yet, and there is nothing to download today. The website is live and works now, and that remains the way to get a letter while the app is being built.
The website already generates a formally structured letter cited to the law that applies to your situation. What it cannot do is sit in your pocket and keep track of time for you.
Photograph or type in what you have been told, answer the questions, and have a properly cited letter ready before the day gets away from you. No waiting until you can find a laptop.
Benefit and complaint processes run on strict clocks. The DWP mandatory reconsideration window is usually one month from the date on the decision letter. Appeals to the First-tier Tribunal run one month from the mandatory reconsideration notice. Complaints procedures have their own response times. The app would hold those dates for you and remind you before they pass, rather than leaving you to work it out from a letter in a drawer.
Every letter you have sent, when you sent it, and what you were promised in reply. If a matter escalates to an Ombudsman or a tribunal, that record is the evidence that you gave the organisation a fair chance to put things right.
When you have days rather than weeks, the difference between a letter sent and a letter not sent is often just how quickly you can start. Being able to start on a phone, at the moment the decision lands, is the whole point.
Both the App Store and Google Play are the eventual plan. Neither is available yet, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Before anything else about the app, a reminder about something that is live today.
If you cannot afford a letter, the [Pay It Forward Fund](/pay-it-forward) already covers the full cost of one. It is running now. Applications are reviewed personally, usually within 48 hours, and approved applicants receive a code that covers the letter in full. You do not have to wait for an app, or for anything else.
The fund is also completely separate from the app. Every penny donated to the Pay It Forward pot is ring fenced to fund free letters for people in hardship, and none of it goes to building software. That promise does not change. If you want to help someone be heard right now, the fund is the place to do it, and you can [donate to the fund here](/pay-it-forward).
The app is a separate, future thing. Helping to bring it forward is optional, and it is not a substitute for the fund.
Access to your legal rights should not depend on your ability to pay a solicitor, and it should not depend on owning a laptop or having a quiet hour to use it either.
The people most likely to be wrongly refused are often the people with the least time and the least space to respond. Carers. Shift workers. Parents fighting for SEND provision between school runs. Tenants living in a property that is making them ill. For them, the barrier is rarely willingness. It is time, and the clock.
An app removes a barrier that has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with everyday life.
Development is under way. As the app takes shape we will publish what is built, what is being tested, and when it can realistically be in people's hands. If we do not have a date, we will say we do not have a date.
In the meantime, you can [generate a letter on the website](/generate/personal), and if the cost is out of reach, you can [apply to the Pay It Forward Fund](/pay-it-forward/apply).
If you want to help bring the app forward, the App Fund below is separate from the Pay It Forward pot and goes only towards building it.