LE v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

This is an appeal in a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) case.

The brief factual and procedural background fact is as follows. The claimant is now aged 37. She suffers from asthma, anxiety & depression, deep vein thrombosis & varicose veins of the lower limbs, restless legs, acid reflux, sciatica/back pain and insomnia. On 2.3.23 she made a new claim for PIP. She was assessed by a Health Care Professional (HCP), and following that assessment, the claim was refused by the Secretary of State on 19.5.23 who concluded that the claimant was not entitled to either component of PIP, the claimant scoring 4 points for daily living and 0 points for mobility. The threshold for an award of either component at the standard rate is 8 points. The claimant sought mandatory reconsideration but the decision was maintained, albeit the claimant was awarded 4 points for mobility. The claimant therefore appealed to the First-tier Tribunal but the FTT dismissed her appeal and confirmed the Secretary of State’s decision. The claimant sought permission to appeal from the FTT but that application was refused by DTJ on 12.11.24 who concluded that the FTT had been entitled to prefer the HCP’s evidence, and had given sufficient reasons for doing so.

The application was therefore renewed to this tribunal and on 24.1.25 UTJ Church granted permission to appeal with the following observations:

“It is adequately clear from the Tribunal’s statement of reasons that it found the healthcare professional’s report to be reliable and that it found your evidence to be unreliable. It was entitled to assess it that way.

However, I am satisfied that it is at least arguable that the Tribunal failed to explain with adequate clarity why it decided on the scoring that it did. In particular, while it explained its decision making only in relation to preparing food, washing and bathing, planning and following journeys and moving around, it didn’t make specific findings about your ability to manage therapy (taking your medicine and doing your exercises, relevant to daily living descriptor 3), toileting, washing and dressing, communicating and reading, engaging with other people face to face or budgeting”.

As is customary, the Secretary of State was directed to respond to the appeal following the permission grant and has done so by way of submissions dated 5.3.25 supporting the appeal. In view of the fact(s) that this is now a supported appeal and I agree with the Secretary of State’s submissions, I propose to explain relatively succinctly why I have allowed the appeal.

The FTT’s reasons for refusing the appeal are set out in a Statement of Reasons dated 4.9.24. With all due respect to the FTT, and acknowledging their heavy workload, the reasoning is inadequate to do justice to the case. Whilst brevity is to be commended generally, a fact-finding tribunal must find facts and give sufficient reasons to explain its ultimate conclusions. The FTT failed to do that here. Instead the Tribunal set out various pieces of evidence and then arrived at an ‘omnibus’ conclusion at paragraph 28) as follows:

“In view of all above the tribunal preferred the evidence of the HCP in its entirety (but accepted the points awarded by the first decision maker and the second decision maker at mandatory reconsideration). The HCP is specifically trained for the purposes of the PIP assessment and they made their findings after a video consultation with the appellant and following a discussion with her”.

It then set out in 5 short sub-paragraphs [paragraphs a) to e)] its “findings of fact” and its decision to award no other points for daily living or mobility, untethered to any explanatory reasoning. The FTT appear to have come to these conclusions by relying on the HCP’s report in preference to the account given by the claimant. What is missing is any reasoned conclusions based on a consideration of the evidence as a whole: see e.g. MW v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (PIP): [2016] UKUT 76 (AAC) at [21].

The First-tier Tribunal’s treatment of a number of potentially relevant point-scoring descriptors is, in my judgment, parsimonious to the point that the claimant is ultimately left wondering why her contentions about the extent of her functional disability were not accepted. While the FTT explained its decision making in relation to preparing food, washing and bathing, planning and following journeys and moving around, it did not make any or any sufficient findings in relation to a number of other potentially relevant point-scoring descriptors put in issue by the claimant with the result that, as the Secretary of State’s representative submitted, “upon perusing through the SOR, it is almost impossible to ascertain the reasons for awarding zero points for the other DL activities and Mobility activities”.

The duty to give adequate reasons includes a duty to provide sufficient reasons to enable the reader to understand why the matter was decided as it was and what conclusions were reached on the “principal important controversial issues”. The tribunal have not done that in this case and this is a material error of law.

For those reasons I have concluded that the FTT’s decision was made in error of law. I therefor allow this appeal and remit the case for reconsideration by a fresh panel of the FTT. The panel that hears this appeal afresh will need to make detailed findings of fact and then apply the law as to entitlement correctly to those findings. The claimant should understand that her success in this appeal is not determinative of the outcome of the case when it is reheard.