[2024] UKUT 332 (AAC)

The oral evidence given at the Upper Tribunal hearing was clearly not available to the decision maker at DBS, but we are entitled to take it, and the transcript of the Crown Court trial, into account when considering whether the DBS made a material mistake of fact on which the Barring Decision was based.

What the Appellant said in his live evidence was broadly consistent with his previous written representations, and with his case at his criminal trial. However, there was nothing in what he said that persuaded us that the DBS had necessarily erred in preferring the children’s evidence over AA’s evidence.

As Ms Hartley said following conclusion of AA’s evidence at the hearing, we were left in the same place that DBS was when it made the Barring Decision: there were inconsistencies in the children’s evidence, but there were also inconsistencies in AA’s own evidence. The DBS was entitled to decide that, notwithstanding the inconsistencies and imperfections in the children’s evidence, it should be preferred to AA’s evidence.