[2025] UKUT 001 (AAC)

Assuming that a request for revision on the basis of official error had been made, the claimant’s case is that the DWP decision-maker failed to have any regard or any proper regard to a letter from the GP dated 28 November 2017 which the claimant had provided. This failure, it is submitted, amounted to official error.

The substance of the GP’s letter of 28 November 2017 read as follows (with the passage relied upon by the claimant now italicised):

That short paragraph in the GP’s letter was then followed by a brief list of medical conditions with the date of first diagnosis indicated in each case.

It is perfectly true that there is no mention of the GP letter in the disallowance decision dated 6 February 2019 on the 2018 claim. However, this does not mean that it was disregarded. At the very outset of the decision, the decision-maker stated that “I looked at all of the information available to me, including the ‘How your disability affects you’ form” (emphasis added). Indeed, arguably the key word there is “including” – the PIP2 form was evidently not the only document consulted, as the decision-maker subsequently referred to various of the detailed findings in the HCP’s assessment. The GP’s letter was plainly part of the information available to the decision-maker and the absence of any express mention of the letter does not mean it was not considered, not least as there is no requirement to itemise every single piece of evidence considered. Furthermore, and in any event, I agree with Mr Anderson’s submission that the GP’s letter is cast in very general terms and is vague and unparticularised about the extent to which the PIP activities are affected. The decision-maker was entitled to place greater weight on the more detailed HCP assessment, and the omission of any specific reference to the GP letter is some considerable way short of indicating “a ‘clear and obvious’ error of fact or law made by some officer on the facts disclosed to him”, to use the formulation derived from R(H) 2/04.

There was, therefore, no official error in the course of the determination of the 2018 claim for PIP.