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Definition of Supervision in DWP PIP guidance
Does anyone know the basis for this definition in the DWP’s guide:
Supervision is a need for the continuous presence of another person to avoid a serious adverse event occurring to the claimant. The risk must be likely to occur in the absence of such supervision. To apply, supervision must be required for the full duration of the activity.
The definition is in schedule 1 of the PIP Regs and is as follows:
““supervision” means the continuous presence of another person for the purpose of ensuring C’s safety”.
The “likely occurrence of the risk” bit has been imported from the DLA case law on the concept of the remoteness of the risk. That might be fair enough. However, I think that the concept of “serious adverse event occurring to the claimant” might be putting an unnecessary gloss on the regulations given that there is no mention of the risk of serious or substantial danger to the claimant in those regulations. It’s probably going to take an UTT to sort that out.
Thanks - my main concern was the meaning of likely. In line with DLA supervision likelihood, as opposed to ‘more likely than not to happen each time’, seems more favourable than the DWP guidance implies. I’m also wondering if there might be a different way of looking at continuous, but I’m still pondering that one.
Much to be concerned about full stop really. I think the bigger problem here is the removal of the idea of “continual”, which was accepted as being something less than “continuous”.