[2025] UKUT 262 (AAC)

The primary focus of this ground was that the FTT had failed to show that it had had regard to paragraph 2(1) in Annex B to the 2012 Scheme and had failed as a consequence to explain on what basis the inadequate supervision of the Alsatian dog might have constituted “a violent omission”. The interested party’s response was to query why the attack by the dog was not obviously, and in any event, covered by paragraph 2(1)(a), as a physical attack. On this particular argument under ground 2, it seems to me that the interested party’s argument may well have had merit, particularly given the exception in paragraph 4(1)(c) in Annex B (on which CICA also rely) is predicated on the criminal injury having resulted from an animal attack.

However, as I have touched on in paragraph 50 above, the wider point, which CICA in the end argued for (whether in the alternative or otherwise) is that the FTT did not (as shown through its decision and its full reasons) show that it had had any regard to paragraph 2 in Annex B to the 2012 Scheme at all.

The FTT set the material provisions of Annex B out in its full reasons of 13 June 2024. But then, having tasked itself in paragraph 7 of its full reasons with answering whether a crime had been committed and “whether it was a crime of violence within the meaning of the Scheme”, the FTT failed in relation to the second issue to have any, or at least any obvious, regard to paragraph 2 in Annex B to the 2012 Scheme. The decision and reasoning focuses on paragraph 4(1)(c) in Annex B. For the reasons I have set out above under the first ground for judicial review, satisfaction of an exception found within one of the paragraph 4(1) exclusions from a crime or violence does not (and did not here) mean that “a crime of violence” had been established conclusively under the 2012 Scheme.

To the extent I have just identified, CICA’s second ground for judicial review is also made out; though I am not sure it adds to or is really a different substantive ground to the first judicial review ground.