[2025] UKUT 355 (AAC)

The Applicant (to whom I shall refer as the “claimant”) served in the Royal Navy from 1990 until 2015. In 2005 he was involved in a traumatic episode while on tour in Iraq. It is agreed that this caused him to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”). The claimant continued to serve in the Royal Navy for a further ten years in a variety of roles until his discharge in 2015. He made a claim under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme.

On 17 February 2016 the Respondent (to whom I shall refer as the “Secretary of State”) made an award which placed the claimant’s accepted condition of PTSD at Table 3, Item 4, Level 12 of Schedule 3 to the Armed Forces and Reserve Forces (Compensation Scheme) Order 2011 (the “SoS Decision”).

The claimant appealed the SoS Decision, which was upheld by a panel of the First-tier Tribunal, but that decision of the First-tier Tribunal was set aside following the claimant’s successful appeal to the Upper Tribunal before me. I decided that the First-tier Tribunal had fallen into error in its approach to the issue of “permanence”. I remitted the matter to the First-tier Tribunal for re-hearing by a different panel.

On 22 February 2023 a three-member panel of the First-tier Tribunal (War Pensions and Armed Forces Compensation Chamber) convened at Fox Court to hear the claimant’s remitted appeal against the SoS Decision (the “Tribunal”).

The Tribunal allowed the claimant’s appeal in part, deciding that the test for permanence was met and the claimant’s PTSD was “moderate” (rather than “severe”, as the claimant had argued) and an award at Table 3, Item 2, Level 8 of Schedule 3 to the AFCS Regulations was therefore appropriate (the “FtT Decision”). Full written reasons for the FtT Decision were issued on 5 June 2023.

Between the date of the FtT Decision and the date of the claimant’s application to the First-tier Tribunal for an extension of time to apply for permission to appeal the FtT Decision, the Court of Appeal handed down judgment in Pearson v SSD[2024] EWCA Civ 150 (“Pearson”). That case raised some issues that the claimant says bear on the issues in his appeal about the proper interpretation of the descriptors for Level 6 and Level 8, and that had the Tribunal approached the interpretation of the Table 3 descriptors in the way the Court of Appeal did in Pearson,it would have found his mental disorder to be “severe” and would have made an award at Table 3, Item 1, Level 6.

On 30 September 2024 the claimant’s solicitors made an application to the First-tier Tribunal for an extension of time to admit an out of time application for permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. On 8 October 2024 the President of the First-tier Tribunal (WPAFC) refused to extend time and refused to admit the application.

The claimant then renewed his application to the Upper Tribunal, asking it to:

On 23 January 2025 I refused to extend time and therefore refused to admit the application for permission to appeal (the “Permission Disposal Decision”). I gave reasons for my decision.