Bostock, R (on the application of) v Entwhistle & Anor

For police injury-pension purposes, the question is whether the officer’s disablement from performing the ordinary duties of a police officer is likely to be permanent. The medical referee must assess that question on the assumption that the officer receives normal appropriate medical treatment. It is insufficient merely to state that the medical condition is usually lifelong or capable of being influenced by treatment. The referee must consider how treatment would affect the particular disablement, including whether it would enable a return to ordinary police duties. The decision must give sufficient reasoning to show that this issue has been properly considered.

The claimant, a former police officer, sought judicial review of a medical referee’s decision under the Police Pensions Regulations 1987. The referee accepted that the claimant was disabled from performing the ordinary duties of a police officer but concluded that the disablement caused by anxiety was not likely to be permanent. The claimant challenged that conclusion on the grounds that the referee had applied the wrong test and had misunderstood the relevance of medical treatment.

The court rejected the challenge to the formulation of the test but considered whether the referee had properly applied the statutory assumption concerning appropriate treatment.

1. Ground 2 failed. Regulation A12 requires consideration of whether the officer is disabled from performing the ordinary duties of a police officer and whether that disablement is likely to be permanent. The referee set out that test in the report and certificate and sufficiently repeated it.

2. Ground 1 succeeded. Regulation A12(1A) required the referee to assume that the claimant received normal appropriate medical treatment. The referee correctly stated that assumption and that anxiety could be influenced by treatment. However, he did not explain how treatment might affect this claimant’s disablement or consider treatment in the context of a possible return to police duties.

3. The evidence overwhelmingly indicated a connection between the claimant’s anxiety state and police work. The referee’s reasoning did not adequately distinguish between the cause of the anxiety state and the question whether the established condition would continue to disable the claimant from performing police duties.

4. A medical referee’s report is not to be construed as a court judgment, but it must contain sufficient detail to enable the reader to understand the reasoning without close textual reconstruction.

The determination was quashed and the appeal was remitted to a fresh medical referee. It was unnecessary to consider ground 3.

First-instance judicial review application. The determination of the medical referee was quashed and the appeal was remitted for consideration by a fresh medical referee.