GO v The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

This case is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for reconsideration at an oral hearing.

The members of the First-tier Tribunal who reconsider the case should not include any of those who were previously involved in considering the claimant’s appeal.

The legislation requires that the tribunal can only base their decision on circumstances as they were at the date of the original decision by the Secretary of State. They can take later events into account but only for the purpose of deciding what the circumstances were at the decision date.

The parties should send any further evidence upon which they wish to rely to the HMCTS regional tribunal office within one month of the issue of this decision.

The new First-tier Tribunal are not bound in any way by the decision of the previous tribunal and may reach the same or a different outcome depending on the findings of fact that they make.

On 8 July 2025 Judge Smith gave the claimant permission to appeal on the grounds that the tribunal had arguably erred in its application of the law (in particular, regulation 4(2A) of the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013) to the facts of the claimant’s case and failed to give adequate reasons for their decision. The Secretary of State’s representative supports the appeal, and consents to a decision without reasons if her submissions are accepted. The claimant also agrees to a decision without reasons. I shall therefore only give brief reasons for allowing the appeal and remitting the case to a different First-tier Tribunal panel for redetermination.

The social security benefit in issue in this appeal is personal independence payment (PIP), and the activities in issue are activities 7 (communicating verbally) and 9 (engaging with other people face to face) in schedule 1 to the PIP Regulations. The claimant suffers from a hearing impairment and anxiety. She has hearing aids, is on anxiety medication and has received cognitive behavioural therapy. She has said in effect that she is not claiming PIP on account of her anxiety, but that it compounds the difficulties caused by her hearing problems.

The claimant’s appeal came before the First-tier Tribunal on 13 August 2024. The tribunal awarded the claimant 2 points under descriptor 7(b) in the schedule to the Regulations (“needs to use an aid or appliance to be able to speak or hear”) and no points for activity 9. They dismissed the appeal. The claimant had argued that she satisfied descriptors 7(e) and 9(d), bearing in mind the references in regulation 4 to performing an activity safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and within a reasonable time period. In her mandatory reconsideration request she had had put her reason for satisfying descriptor 7(e) as being that she could not hear speech unless she was in a very quiet environment. In a noisy environment she could not hear speech even with her hearing aids because they amplified the background noise as well as the words she was trying to hear. As to descriptor 9(d) she said ‘I cannot mix with other people "as many times as I might need" due to the anxiety it causes when I worry that I will not be able to hear the person/people correctly or, in some cases, (noisy environments) I know I will not be able to hear them at all which is incredibly embarrassing and simply stops me socialising in many different environments’.

The extent of the claimant’s disabilities is a question of fact. I can only interfere with the tribunal’s decision if the decision involved an error of law. But the law requires a tribunal to give an adequate statement of their reasons for reaching a particular decision. A statement of reasons is adequate if it enables the reader to see why the tribunal reached the conclusion they did, in sufficient detail to show whether they applied the law correctly.

The tribunal’s statement of reasons sets out the relevant law, including (at paragraph 8) regulation 4 of the PIP Regulations. It contains some errors of fact, but in the main these were not material to the decision. It refers to some of the claimant’s evidence, including an audiologist’s report. It found that the claimant had difficulties hearing in a group of people or in a noisy background environment, and that this caused her tiredness, frustration and at times feelings of anger.

They found that the claimant satisfied descriptor 7(b) since she had been prescribed (and therefore reasonably needed) a hearing aid. They did not explain why the claimant did not meet any higher-scoring descriptor under activity 7. As to activity 9, they found that she could engage with people and form relationships, although she would avoid group social settings such as pubs (the claimant disputes the accuracy of this finding, saying that she avoids socialising generally).

I agree with the judge who granted permission and with the Secretary of State’s representative that the tribunal erred in law by not explaining why the claimant did not meet any of the higher scoring descriptors under activity 7 or any descriptors under activity 9, reading those descriptors in accordance with regulation 4. They were not of course, obliged to find that any of those descriptors applied to the claimant, since finding the facts is a matter for them. But they did need to consider explicitly whether the claimant met the descriptors she claimed and, if they decided that she did not, to explain this to the claimant.

I must therefore set the decision aside. It is not appropriate for me to remake the decision, which is best done with the expertise of a First-tier Tribunal panel. I therefore remit the case to be decided by a freshly constituted tribunal. I have given some directions at the beginning of this decision. I stress that I have been concerned only with the legal question whether the tribunal gave adequate reasons for their decision. I have not reached any conclusion on what descriptors the claimant met and nothing in my decision is intended to suggest that I have.