good day all, it's a beautiful morning here in the garden of england and i hope it's likewise wherever you're reading this ?

a client i have is agoraphobic and although she has admitted she can work, she could only do so if she has a person accompanying her to and from work.

the pca scored her 5 points from the mental health descriptors (physical descriptors do not apply), and the tribunal increased this to eight. still unfortunately not enought for the cl. to be treated as incapable of work.

however, i feel it is unreasonable for the tribunal to decide cl. is fit for work on this basis because cl. will not always be able to find a person to accompany her to and from work, which would result in cl. being in and out of work due to absence.

apart from trying to find mental health descriptors that tribunal has not considered does anyone have any thoughts and / or suggestions on my grounds for an appeal to the commissioners ?

as ever, all response greatly accepted and appreciated.

pete

Hi Pete,

its pretty good here too in Jurassic coast/World heritage do da land.

Without seeing the SOS/ROP etc, i'm devoid of any meaningful suggestions, but your posting nagged at me because in the past i had lots of clients with social phobia's, having said that i've got a few at the moment. getting back to the point the following occurred to me but more in the context of airy fairy thoughts rather than specifically challenging the tribunal decision?

As a matter of interest are the 8 points mostly clumped around "coping with pressure" and "interaction with other people"? if so may lend credence to the sentence below.

Did the tribunal consider exemptions i.e. reg 10 IFW regs, i'm thinking of mental health issues severely restricting her social functioning?

What about her agoraphobia? i.e. symptoms,how it affects her day-to-day life, history etc etc etc any links with any other issues or causations e.g. trauma's or PTSD etc. Did the tribunal decision take that on board?

Agoraphobia, i think its Greek crudely translated as 'fear of the market place', forgive the ramblings but agoraphobia is rarely as simple as problems with getting from A to B?

see ya andy

I was just looking at a similar case reg 27 or
CTe
CPb
CPc
CPd
CPf
OPa
OPd

You really need to be in a position to argue that the Tribunal could not reasonably have come to the conclusion it did OR has not justified its conclusion adequately. Was it an oral hearing? You need to go through the ROP (assuming you can read it) and the docs and see what evidence there was before the Tribunal and then look at what they did with it.

One good big discrepancy clearly identified is often good enought to get a full-timer to set it aside or get leave to appeal from a Commissioner. You're vanishingly unlikely to do better than get it set aside (probably by SoS consent if the error is glaring enough) but at least you then get a differently constituted tribunal who might be more sympathetic.

Could you argue that client should be exempt under the old reg 10(b) of the IFW regs (still in existence following Howker)?

This says that someone should be exempt from pca if "there would be a substantial risk to the mental or physical health of any person if he were found capable of work."

I think you could argue that cl would get very ill if had to travel to work unaccompained and that tribunal should have considered this.
See pp 717-721 of Bonner for case law