[2025] UKUT 061 (AAC)

It will be apparent from what I have said above that the FtT Decision is not perfect, and neither are the reasons given for it as clear as might be hoped. The Tribunal would have benefited from a more methodical approach, identifying the issues it had to decide and deciding them in turn, rather than seeking to deal with multiple issues together. In this case the approach the Tribunal took resulted in it failing to make findings on some of the matters that were required to decide whether the statutory tests for entitlement were satisfied.

However, the Upper Tribunal should only interfere in the decision making of the First-tier Tribunal where any errors of law it has made are material. Because the 2002 Regulations require each of the conditions to entitlement to be satisfied, so a failure to satisfy any one of them results in a claim failing, the Tribunal’s failings are not material in this case. The findings of fact the Tribunal made were open to it on the evidence before it, and on those facts the claimant’s appeals were bound to fail.

For the reasons I have given I conclude that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal does not involve a material error of law. I dismiss both appeals.