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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Decision making and appeals  →  Thread

Audio Recording of Tribunal Hearings

Robin Hood
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Benefits advice service - Trafford Council, Greater Manchester

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Joined: 9 July 2010

Has anybody had any recent experience of requesting hearings to be taped and what the response was?

I ask the question as lately various members of the team have attended hearings in Manchester and been met with situations where the tone of the tribunal judges to both the clients and ourselves has been inappropriate & harsh to say the least. There seems to be a distinct lack of respect that they themselves would not entertain.

I have also today read a Statement of Reasons that accuses a client of ‘exaggerating’, ‘embelishing’, ‘interupting’ etc. ... when having been there this was nothing of the case ... but how do you prove that without an audio recording? Unfortunately I fear that this attitude in hearings seems to be becoming more common.

Does anyone have any opinions on this?

Also it seems to be common practice for tribunals to want to run through all their questions with clients before providing a representative any opportunity to come back on important points as and when they arise. I really do not understand this insistence as it does nothing to add to the clarity of proceedings and important matters are not contextualised with further information that may be available. The best tribunals are those where there is a real dialogue with all those present.

[ Edited: 21 Oct 2016 at 05:39 pm by Robin Hood ]
WROTricia
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Advice Works, Renfrewshire

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All our tribunals are audio recorded as a matter of course but HMCTS - naively thought this was the case all over. Why wouldn’t it be? So when you request a statement of reasons there is no recording with it? Wonder why that’s not the case in Glasgow….

Mike Hughes
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Senior welfare rights officer - Salford City Council Welfare Rights Service

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Have to say that one of my greatest frustrations is exactly as you describe above i.e. a tribunal who want to exhaust the appellant before they let the rep. speak. This has been going on now for around 16/17 years and then they wonder why they have so many adjournments and so many appeals which run over time. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been listed for 40 minutes; run closer to 60 to 75 and, had I been allowed to speak at the outset, could have disposed of most key matters inside 10 to 15 minutes at worst. Regionally in the North West we appear to have been assigned a supporting role, which I find bizarre in light of the number of positive comments about the need for, and value of, representatives from our full-time judges either at specific hearings or via TUG meetings. Say one thing. Do another.

Recording hearings is a difficult area. I think you can argue against whether someone interrupted based on an audio recording but I’m not sure where that takes you. Does that illustrate that the tribunal are liars? That may well poison future hearings with those panel members and may not be worth it if the appeal can be won based on other stuff. On the other hand we have all come across tribunal members where we continue to be astonished they remain deemed fit to sit. A fine balance.

Whether or not they exaggerated or embellished may not be clear at all. There is an argument that you argue against the latter two based solely on the evidence presented and associated documents. I harbour the suspicion that the effort involved in getting a hearing recorded far outweighs the benefit in most cases. That may well be more of a measure of just how difficult it is to arrange (and it is) but I do think that an appellants anxiety about having a hearing recorded is driven by complex motivations and a reps. need for that requires a step back.

The one time I requested a recording of a phone conversation involving someone I managed, with the intention of supporting a complaint about the other party, I found myself in the fairly horrid position of being unable to defend the conduct of the staff member. An audio recording to enhance a case against embellishment etc. could be helpful but may not be essential. If a recording is the only means of making the argument then I’d be asking whether it was a winning argument and whether it highlighted some hitherto unseen flaws in the case argument.