[2025] UKUT 296 (AAC)

Save for whether Hickey should be preferred to RC (it is plainly the more authoritative decision as it is decision of the Court of Appeal, but with respect the issue is for what it is authority), I agree with all that is set out in this submission of the Secretary of State.

The FTT’s decision on activity 9 was not based on a proper consideration of all the relevant evidence before it concerning that daily living activity. The FTT materially erred in law as a result and its decision must be set aside, and the appeal redecided afresh by a completely differently constituted First-tier Tribunal.

There is also a linkage to whether RC conflicts with Hickey in paragraph 4.11 of the Secretary of State’s submission concerning the appellant’s interactions with others in the supermarket. The appellant’s representative in an earlier submission on the appeal highlighted from the FTT’s audio record of proceedings that the appellant’s oral evidence to the FTT about her ‘speaking’ to people in the supermarket seemingly consisted of her responding to the person on the till who had commented to her about the weather. If RC remains good law, that would not amount to “establishing a relationship”. And if this is the case, the FTT would (at least arguably) have further erred in law in taking into account evidence that did not constitute the appellant “engaging socially”, as that phrase is defined in the ‘third limb’ of the PIP Regs.

Putting this to one side for the moment, however, the appellant’s submission on the adequacy of the FTT’s enquiry and reasoning essentially chimes with the Secretary of State’s submissions (save for Hickey being more authoritative). As the appellant’s representative puts it, and with which I agree:

“With respect to the FTT, regardless of whether fleeting interactions in a supermarket can count as forming a relationship…., the evidence on which the FTT relied does not even go so far as to allow a determination that the Appellant was forming relationships. The Appellant’s evidence of interactions she did manage in was not particularised in detail and was qualified by other statements which suggested even this was difficult for her.”

I turn therefore to address whether RC is no longer good law in the light of what Hickey decided. It was on that issue that I directed the oral hearing to be held. The issue may be encapsulated in asking whether, as was seemingly the appellant’s evidence, responding by saying “Yes, it is” to a comment from a stranger in a supermarket or at a bus-stop about the weather that “It’s a nice day”, is evidence of the person making the response establishing a relationship with the stranger.