[2025] UKUT 020 (AAC)

Mr Edwards submitted that there was sufficient evidence before the FTT to decide that a second claim to PIP had been properly made by the Appellant on 29 July 2022 and negatively determined. Although there might have been fuller evidence before the FTT than simply the Respondent’s written submission, this was sufficient evidence or material upon which it was entitled to make its decision. There was no error of law in the FTT’s findings at [44] of the SOR therefore.

He also argued that the UT has not been informed what submissions or evidence was given about the second claim at the hearing before the FTT and there is no transcript of the hearing in order for this to be independently established. He argued that, in addition to the written submission to the FTT regarding the Appellant’s second claim to PIP, we do not know if anything else was said by the Respondent’s Presenting Officer at the hearing before the FTT in March 2023. There may have been further evidence presented establishing the Appellant’s claim to PIP being made by telephone 29 July 2022 but it not being pursued.

In any event there does not appear to be any dispute that the Appellant made a telephone call to the DWP to make a second claim to PIP on 29 July 2022. In the absence of any dispute that a telephone claim to PIP was made on that date (and that a PIP2 questionnaire was not provided by the Appellant so his claim to PIP was disallowed or negatively determined on 25 September 2022), the FTT was entitled to make the findings that it did at [44] of the SOR.

Mr Edwards pointed out that if there had been any dispute as to what occurred, the burden would have been on the Appellant at the hearing before the FTT to say that what he said on the telephone call to the DWP on 29 July 2022 so as to support any suggestion he did not make a second valid claim to PIP on that date. There were no direct records of that telephone call, nor online systems nor any contemporary note of the call to support a suggestion that what was said by the Appellant on 29 July 2022 did not constitute a valid claim to PIP.