PIP Descriptor 7 - in regard to communication support

PIP Activity 7 . in regard to communication support. I have a decision from a FtT which confirms no points for Activity 7 ( Communicating verbally ) as the client can express himself and communicate with people he is comfortable with .  Activity 7 in itself does not refer to any such specific group of people , and the tribunal has not referred to any case law to back up this assertion.  .  Is anybody aware of any case law which supports the tribunals assertion.

many thanks for any help

This may not be relevant to your case, however depending on why it is that your client is able to express themselves with people they are comfortable with,SSWP v GJ [2016] UKUT 8 (AAC) might he relevant.

Rightsnet link is here, https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/welfare-rights/caselaw/item/overlap-between-descriptor-7c-communication-support-and-9c-social-support

In GJ Judge Rowley was consider if “an anxious claimant who, for example, is not able to communicate with strangers or persons who are not well known to him or is not able to do so when in the company of a large number of people but is able to verbally express himself or herself and understand communication with a person with whom they are familiar and comfortable would, in all probability, score points under activity 9 but not under activity 7.”

So might be of relevance if anxiety or other mental health issues lie behind your clients being unable to communicate with people they are not comfortable with?

Thanks Kieran. I should have said, his communication problems are caused by Asperger’s syndrome in that , as confirmed by his consultant , has been found to have information processing differences,  poor working memory and an inability to recognise that he has a tendency to repeat chunks of conversation ;and that he is disinhibited in his conversational style that others may misinterpret what his meanings are behind that. So I am arguing that his communication issues are caused directly by his disability

IMHO there are two ways to look at this. In terms of error of law I think you may be onto something. Simply saying that somebody does not satisfy the descriptor because they can communicate with people familiar to them doesn’t seem to be sufficient reasoning. I think the explanation either needs to give details of what the tribunal’s assessment was of the client’s ability to communicate with unfamiliar people and how they weighed this against the situation with familiar people to come to a conclusion that overall the client was able to perform the descriptor to a reasonable standard or it needs to give a more reasoned explanation of why the tribunal concluded that the client’s problems were covered by activity 9 and not by activity 7. If I’ve understood what you are saying correctly you could distinguish your client from the case highlighted by Kieran as you would be saying that the client’s communication problems are the same whoever he speaks to and the reason he is able to communicate better with familiar people is not because his ability increases but because those people are more used to his difficulties and working around them.

That all said, the other side of the issue is whether if you win the argument about whether activity 7 should be in play your client will actually score any points. Complex information is defined as either a complicated sentence or more than one sentence (which you would imply is of a similar level of complexity). As discussed in the case above, this is not a very ‘high bar’ of verbal ability and from your description it would seem to me that it may not apply to your client (although he should obviously be scoring at least 4 points for engaging with others - if he did not get that that is where I would be focusing my efforts).