[2025] UKUT 262 (AAC)

The interested party had the good fortune to be assisted by the Free Representation Unit, and through FRU by Mr George Molyneaux of counsel, in opposing the judicial review. Her arguments were as follows.

She argued that the CICA’s judicial review turned, essentially, on grounds 3 and 4. That is: (i) whether the FTT misdirected itself as to the distinction between intent and recklessness (ground 3); and (ii) whether the FTT’s conclusion that the dog was “used with intent to cause injury” was irrational (ground 4). The interested party argued that both grounds should be rejected. This was because, in summary:

As for CICA’s ground 2 the interested party’s argument was that the FTT had not failed to have regard to paragraph 2 of Annex B to the 2012 Scheme, as that paragraph 2 also provides that a “crime of violence” is a crime which involves “a physical attack”, and if there was no error in the FTT’s finding that the dog which bit the interested party had been “used with intent to cause injury” to her, then the incident in which she was injured was plainly “a physical attack”.

The interested party’s answer to CICA’s ground 1 (that an offence under section 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 cannot be a “crime of violence” since it is a crime of strict liability) was twofold. She argued firstly that paragraph 2 of Annex B to the 2012 Scheme requires only that an act or omission involved in the crime be intentional or reckless, it does not require that intention or recklessness is an ingredient of the offence itself. Secondly, and in the alternative,even if CICA was correct about paragraph 2 of Annex B, the facts found by the FTT – including that the dog was “used with intent to cause injury” – would amount to an offence under section 47 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (i.e., an offence which has intention or recklessness as an element).