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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Work capability issues and ESA  →  Thread

Getting to places descriptor

SamW
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Lambeth Every Pound Counts

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Total Posts: 434

Joined: 26 July 2012

Client travelled to medical assessment alone by taxi and would be able to make other journeys to unfamiliar places by taxi, relying on the driver to take on the strain of navigating. She’d need to be dropped off at the door.

She otherwise cannot travel to an unfamiliar place alone.

Is there any caselaw regarding this?

I’d be arguing that the descriptor does not specify whether ‘another person’ needs to be someone familiar to the client and making a distinction between a taxi driver, who drives somewhere on request and takes responsibility for getting the passenger there and public transport where the destinations and routes are set and it is the passenger’s responsibility to catch the right bus/get off at the correct stop/navigate to the destination. Another way of looking at it (making the assumption that the claimant could physically and technically drive) is that if the taxi was there ready to drive the claimant would not be able to cope mentally with driving it to an unfamiliar destination - they need to be accompanied by the taxi driver.

Just a general query, I’d be grateful if anyone has any pointers to good searchable caselaw databases for ESA/social security I’d be grateful. At the moment I use the Tribunals Service database, the Rightsnet Caselaw summaries and at a last resort Google but I often find it difficult to find supportive caselaw without posting on here for help.