Latest Administrative Justice Council minutes

Some interesting bits and pieces from the minutes of the July 2019 meeting of the Administrative Justice Council:

- a new project is being undertaken by HMCTS which looks at the reasons behind appeal decisions in the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal with the view of sharing the data with the DWP. They would look at a sample of decisions from the tribunal and try to identify themes for the reasons.

- there were discussions about DWP decision-making including the trend being used by the DWP of ‘decision is lapsed’ which masks poor decision making; DWP negotiating once an appeal is submitted and people accepting lower offers to avoid the tribunal; the need for decisions to be fed back to DWP and medical professionals; and a question on whether there is any quality assurance for first instance decisions.

- on the polluter pays scheme (a fee that would be paid by the decision-maker to HMCTS and will be tied to the first instance decision and/or compliance with procedure rules), they discussed the possibility of running a pilot in one of the tribunals (without a fee) and the Asylum and Support Tribunal (AST) was suggested.

https://ajc-justice.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/AJC-minutes-5th-July-2019.pdf