My client has just been refused leave to appeal by the commissioner, and I feel inclined to take the case further. I just don't know if or how I can.
The client is a single lady with mental health issues, who I feel merits DLA low mob and middle rate care. Tribunal awarded low care only. Mob refused as she 'only gains reassurance ......'. Obviously our sub concentrated on R(DLA)3/04 and suchlike. The commissioner has pulled out the tribunal's assertion that my clients condition had improved, based on her testimony and the fact that she moved out of sheltered accommodation, to refuse leave on the grounds that she failed to continue to satisfy the conditions. Unfortunately I didn't raise this point in my sub as sor used it to justify award of low care instead of middle, and I was challenging non award of low mob. The fact is that the tribunal erred. The client did not live in sheltered accommodation, but in a bedsit in a shared house. There is evidence to confirm this, which was before them. She moved into a flat, and testified that she could cope better because she no longer had to share facilities, although this is not clear from rop. HELP!!! Is there anything I can do? Really want to help my client, who is spiralling down again partly because of this.

As far as I can tell the only remedy for refusal of leave to appeal would have to be judicial review, and that would mean that you would probably have to show that on the evidence and information before him no reasonable Commissioner could have arrived at the decision he did.

You seem now to consider that a major reason may have been your failure to advance a particular argument in your application for leave: if that is so, the Commissioner can only take into account the arguments but before him. You cannot blame him if you did not urge a significant part of the case before him: it is up to you to convince him that it is plausible that the Tribunal erred in law in coming to unjustifiable or at least unjustified conclusions on the evidence before it.