[2025] UKUT 001 (AAC)

Therefore, the parties’ respective positions on this appeal, stripped of complex nuances, may be summarised as follows.

The Secretary of State’s position is that the 2021 FTT was concerned only with the claimant’s appeal in relation to the disallowance of her 2017 claim, following a LEAP review. Mr Anderson submitted that the FTT had erred in law by allowing the claimant’s appeal in respect of the 2017 claim but then failing to specify an end date to that award in circumstances where the claimant had (in 2018) made a second and unsuccessful application for PIP.

The claimant’s position is that all three PIP claims, and not just the decision on the 2017 claim, were properly before the FTT on appeal in 2021. In any event, the decisions on the 2018 and 2020 claims had each involved official error and so the appeals against those disallowances were not late. As such, the FTT did not err in law by making an open-ended award from the date in 2017 when PIP had first been claimed. In the alternative, if the decisions did not arise from official error, defects in the way those decisions had been notified meant that the claimant was in any event in time to apply for revision (or was entitled to bring appeals in respect of each decision without first seeking revision by way of a request for mandatory reconsideration).