A win after two years of trying

What I would say to anybody at the first refusal is that this is normal, it is a stage rather than an ending, and most people who persist get further.

My honest advice is to ask somebody to read your letter before you send it. Mine cut a page and made it twice as effective.

My first appeal was three pages of feeling and got nowhere. My second was one page against their own published criteria and was granted.

The single most useful thing I did was ask, in writing, for the specific criterion I had failed. That turned a vague refusal into a checklist.

A refusal letter is a first draft. Mine was overturned on the second attempt and nothing about my situation had changed, only the paperwork.

Nothing to add except that I am glad this thread exists.

I would say get everything you have already been told in writing before you start, because verbal assurances evaporate.

Mine took four months and three letters and was eventually granted, and I nearly gave up after the first one.

I found that quoting their own document back to them was far more effective than any argument of my own.

The thing nobody tells you is that a refusal is often about missing information rather than a judgement, and supplying it is the whole job.

Something that helped was a template somebody here shared, which I rewrote in my own words and which gave me the structure I was missing.

You have said something a lot of us have not managed to. Thank you.

I kept a log of every call with the date and the name and it was the reason my complaint was taken seriously at the third stage.