[2025] UKUT 181 (AAC)

The Tribunal concluded whether extensive enquiries were required because they determined that the only award the Applicant could qualify for was a further mental injury. Accordingly, it dismissed the appeal under paragraph 89(b). This was not correct. The Applicant detailed incidents of physical abuse inflicted by his girlfriend in his first witness statement. These included being kicked, punched, assaulted with an iron pole and having his hair pulled.

Part B of the 2012 Scheme (Tariff of Injuries: Part B) provides a tariff for physical abuse of adults, including domestic abuse. Of relevance is Level B3 which provides that “intermittent physical assaults resulting in an accumulation of healed wounds, burns or scalds, but with no appreciable disfigurement” attracts an award of £2,000.

The Applicant’s history of the abuse was accepted in its entirety by the Tribunal. On its findings, it was not the case that the only award which he could qualify for was one for an additional mental injury. The physical incidents in his witness statement were sufficient evidence in support of the application. There would have been no need for additional evidence by any medicolegal expert to value the injuries.

A factual mistake was thus made by the Tribunal on the proper tariff available to the Applicant in its assessment of paragraph 89(b). The submission made by CICA concerned additional extensive enquiries with respect to the Applicant’s mental health (and not the physical nature of the abuse). This point was put to the Tribunal at the hearing by the Applicant. Nonetheless, it proceeded on the assumption that the only award available would be for the Applicant’s mental injury.

The Applicant gave evidence in his witness statement that his assailant kicked him in the chest in December 2014, regularly pushed him in 2015 and threw a shoe at his head in 2015. All these incidents took place in the United Kingdom; indeed his witness evidence indicates that this took place in his property. This evidence was unchallenged at the Tribunal and it was not suggested that these assaults did not cause wounding.