UK Social Security and Child Support Commissioners' Decisions

 
DECISION OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY COMMISSIONER
1. My decision is as follows. It is given under paragraph 8(4) and (5)(c) of Schedule 7 to the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000.
2. 1. The decision of the Manchester appeal tribunal under reference U/40/072/2002/04066, held on 14^th November 2002, is erroneous in point of law.
3. 2. I set it aside and remit the case to a differently constituted appeal tribunal.
4. 3. I direct that appeal tribunal to conduct a complete rehearing of the issues that arise for decision. In particular, it must investigate and determine whether the claimant had good cause for delaying in claiming housing benefit.

The appeal to the Commissioner

5. The issue in this case is whether the claimant had good cause for delaying in claiming housing benefit. The claimant is the appellant on this appeal. The respondent is her local authority, Manchester County Council.
6. The case comes before me as an appeal to a Commissioner against the decision of the appeal tribunal brought by the claimant with my leave. The local authority does not support the appeal.

The history of the case

7. The claimant is mentally disabled. As such she is exempt from council tax. She lives in a house with two others, both of whom are also mentally disabled. She does not have an appointee. Instead, she is encouraged to live as independently as possible. She receives support in order to do that. At first, this support was provided by the local authority. Later, this service was contracted out. When the time came to renew her claim for housing benefit, her support broke down and a claim was not made on time. When the oversight was realised, a claim was made. In order to fill the gap in entitlement between the end of the previous benefit period and the date of the new claim, the claimant had to show that she had good cause for delaying in claiming. The local authority decided that she had not shown good cause. She appealed against that decision, but the tribunal dismissed her appeal.

The claimant's mental age

8. I need only to mention one aspect of the law on good cause. The local authority and the tribunal had to take into account how a reasonable person of the claimant's age would have reacted. In this context, the claimant's age refers to her mental age, not to her chronological age. I so direct the tribunal at the rehearing.
9. In the application for leave to appeal, the claimant's representative stated that she had the mental age of an infant and that the tribunal had been told this. I cannot be sure whether or not the tribunal was told this. I can though be sure that the chairman did not record it in his record of proceedings. If the tribunal is to accept this as a fact, it will need evidence (written or oral) to prove it.
10. The local authority also refers to the lack of an appointee. That is not necessarily significant. It may be an indication of the claimant's mental capacity. Or it may show that the claimant is being encouraged to live independently and to take responsibility for her own affairs to the extent that she is able. The tribunal will have to decide the significance of this fact.

How the tribunal went wrong in law

11. The tribunal went wrong in law in this respect.
12. It came to this conclusion:

'Although the Appellant has a learning difficulty it is reasonable to expect her to have been aware that there would be some time limit for claiming her benefit.'

13. That conclusion may be a reasonable assumption for a reasonable person of adult mental age. However, it by no means follows that the same is true for a reasonable person of the claimant's mental age. There was evidence that the claimant had a mental disability. As far as I can tell, the tribunal did not inquire in detail into the extent of that disability and in particular into the extent of her capacity to understand matters like a claim for financial support. The claimant was competently represented. Nonetheless there was evidence that she might be significantly disabled. The evidence was certainly sufficient to show that she was vulnerable. In those circumstances, the duty on the tribunal to take an inquisitorial approach was particularly high.
14. My conclusion is this. The tribunal did not investigate sufficiently to make soundly based findings of fact on the claimant's mental age, which was essential to a proper analysis of the good cause issue. Consequently, it did not have a sufficient foundation in evidence to reach the conclusion I have quoted in paragraph 9. It thereby went wrong in law.

Signed on original

Edward Jacobs Commissioner 28th March 2003