Revision of Decision

Can anyone help with this enquiry?

I have asked for a revision of a decision in terms of regulation 5 (DAR), as she is just within the 13 months.

The LA have indicated that they are not permitted to revise the decision because the decision in question has already been confirmed by a tribunal (the claimant did not attend the tribunal due to mental health problems, and the tribunal have also refused to set aside their decision).

I cannot find anything which prevents the LA from revising a decision which has already been subject to a tribunal.  Does anyone know whether the LA are correct?

Thanks

Yes they are unfortunately.

You will find the source in Schedule 7 to the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000.  Paragraph 1 defines “relevant decision” as the LA’s decision on a claim, or a subsequent superseding decision.  These may be revised under para 3 or superseded under para 4; in addition, a decision of a Tribunal may be superseded under para 4 but not revised under para 3.  As the decision in force is at this stage a decision of the Tribunal the Council may no longer revise it.

Nor will they be able to supersede it in such a way as to make it behave like an advantageous revision: the grounds for and effective dates of decisions superseding Tribunal decisions (HB&CTB; D&A Regs 7 and 8) mean that any interference with a Tribunal decision can only be retrospective when it is disadvantageous (it’s an anti-fraid measure basically: eg undisclosed capital not rumbled until after tribunal has made a decision in ignorance of that fact).

The claimant’s issue here really is with the Tribunal and its refusal to set aside - a late appeal to the UT might be the only solution now as there is some overlap between fair hearing and procedural mishap.

Thanks very much - the original decision did contain an official error, so problem solved (fingers crossed!)

This is an interesting legal point and I have not found any definitive case law (although there might be some).

Does the authority’s decision only morph into a Tribunal decision (which cannot be revised) if the Tribunal changes the original decision?  Or does the original decision become a decision of the Tribunal even if the Tribunal confirms it (so again it cannot be revised)?  I had assumed the latter when I posted my reply.  It seemed to me the policy intention was that the Tribunal offers an opportunity to put right anything that was wrong in the original, and once you have gone past that stage your only recourse is set aside or UT appeal if there was some injustice/legal error in the way the Tribunal failed to put things right.  But the alternative argument, which Tony relies on, is that the Tribunal hasn’t actually imposed a decision of its own in this case - it has simply ruled that the original LA decision stands and so that decision remains amenable to revision.

I know the Commissioners as were handed down a couple of wobbly table leg propper-uppers on revision (including the aptly named Wood and Carpenter cases) but from memory I don’t think either of them addresses this precise point.

I’ll have a re-read of them and see if there is anything there.

One simple working point is that a tribunal decision may, or may not, change a relevant date or decision.  If it doesn’t change the decision or the date then it hasn’t done anything; if it changes either then it has.

http://www.osscsc.gov.uk/Aspx/view.aspx?id=4239

UT decision on whether a Tribunal decision confirming the original decision becomes a decision of the Tribunal (and therefore no longer amenable to revision by the decision making authority).  Seems that it does: para 25.

Therefore once the case has reached the stage of a Tribunal decision, that decision cannot be torn up and replaced with a favourable one other than by way of set aside/UT appeal.  Any more advantageous decision by the Council could only have effect as a superseding decision from a later date.

If a Council error to the claimant’s disadvantage remains undetected at the Tribunal stage, the claimant will have to attack the Tribunal’s decision itself (with set aside seeming the better bet):the Council cannot revise it.

The way I read it he was dealing with revision on its own self-contained terms initially and finding that the grounds had not been made out, and then going on to say that it didn’t matter anyway because the Tribunal’s decision had put the original beyond the reach of revision anyway with or without grounds.

On first reading of para 20 like Tony I was not quite sure where the Judge was going. He says “the 11 April 2011 decision ... was not a decision that was more advantageous to the appellant” and I was wondering: more advantageous than what?.  Then it dawned on me - the original decision of April 2011 was not more advantageous than it should have been and so it could not be revised in April 2013 in the absence of any official error.

But I think para 23 trumps all of that - he is saying there can be no revision of any decision that has passed through the Tribunal stage, whether it was changed or confirmed, therefore the discussion at para 20 is academic.

You would like to think that the Tribunal would see that as a ground to set aside the decision and to waive any time limits as necessary.  The letter/email conveying the bank’s belated discovery of this is not itself a document relating to the proceedings for the purpose of Rule 37(2) as it didn’t exist at the time of the hearing, but there would presumably be some evidence in the bank’s possession which did exist at that time and which would have revealed the mistake if the Tribunal had seen it.  Might even be able to shoehorn it into the “other procedural irregularity” catch-all.

But I take your point that it leaves a lot to chance and it would be better if the Council could revise the decision without all that fuss.