UK Social Security and Child Support Commissioners' Decisions

[2004] UKSSCSC CDLA_114_2004 (02 April 2004)

 


1. This appeal, brought with leave of the chairman, fails. The decision of the tribunal on 2 9 03 was not erroneous in law for limiting itself to the period from 26 3 03 to 19 5 03. A fresh claim had been made on 20 5 03, apparently awarding higher rate mobility component from 20 5 03 to 19 5 05, but no rate of care component.
2. The present tribunal awarded the claimant higher rate mobility and lowest rate care component on the claim made on 26 3 03, but it regarded its jurisdiction as limited by the date the fresh claim was made. The representative, understandably in view of the more generous award, argued that under s12(8)(b) of the Social Security Act 1998 both the later claim, and the decision made on it, were circumstances not obtaining at 30 4 03, the date of the decision appealed against, and should not have been taken into account.
3. The chairman gave leave on this point. The Secretary of State submitted that s17 of the 1998 Act provides that decisions are final (subject to appeal, revision, supersession or judicial review), and that the later, unappealed, decision on the claim made on 20 5 03 was not before the tribunal substantively, but only procedurally for the purposes of limiting the period under its consideration. The officer cited CSDLA/237/03, in which Mrs Commissioner Parker so held in a similar case, finding that a decision is not the same as a "circumstance" for purposes of s12(8)(b). Chaos would ensue if there were two separate decisions both dealing with the same, or partly the same, period, and it could be unfair to a claimant who did better, rather than, as here, worse under the second decision. I am satisfied the same reasoning applies in this case, and I imagine the representative, who offered no further comment, also accepts the logic of the position.
4. The subsidiary ground of appeal was that the 2 9 03 decision should be set aside because the representative and the claimant were lacking pages 70-71. But the missing pages were simply those reporting the later claim and its outcome, which must have been known at the very least to the claimant. There was no breach of natural justice nor of ECHR art 6 by the pages' absence.
5. The later decision is not before me any more than it was before the tribunal, and any revision of it can be a matter only for the Secretary of State, to whom (via the DLA unit) application would have to be made.

(signed on original) Christine Fellner

Commissioner

2 April 2004