Haworth, R (on the application of) v Northumbria Police Authority

A police authority exercising the consensual reconsideration power under regulation 32(2) of the Police (Injury Benefit) Regulations 2006 may not refuse consent solely because the request is late or the medical decision is described as final. The power is a free-standing safeguard within the statutory scheme. It includes correcting legal or factual mistakes that may leave a retired officer underpaid and cannot otherwise be corrected. Delay may be relevant to the merits, including whether a fair reconsideration remains possible, but it cannot operate as an implied time bar. Administrative or pension costs cannot justify preserving an underpayment. The refusal was quashed and reconsideration ordered.

The claimant, a retired police officer, received an injury-on-duty pension. A 2006 review by the Police Medical Appeal Board substantially reduced her pension by revisiting causation and apportioning disablement between her back and ankle injuries. Subsequent decisions in R (Turner) v Police Medical Appeals Board [2009] EWHC 2867 and R (on the application of Laws) v The Police Medical Appeal Board [2010] EWCA Civ 1099 clarified that a regulation 37 review could not reopen earlier clinical findings.

The claimant sought agreement under regulation 32(2) for reconsideration of the 2006 decision. The police authority refused, relying principally on delay, finality, procedural costs and fiscal stability. The central issue was whether those considerations lawfully justified refusing consent without assessing the merits of the proposed reconsideration.

1. Claim allowed. The refusal dated 6 December 2010 was quashed. The police authority was directed to reconsider whether to consent to referral of the July 2006 PMAB decision under regulation 32(2).
2. Regulation 32(2) is a free-standing mechanism within the statutory scheme. It may correct mistakes of fact or law in a medical decision where the officer may be receiving less than the pension to which the Regulations entitle her and the error cannot otherwise be corrected. References to finality are expressly subject to regulation 32(2). Finality is therefore a condition for exercising the power, not a reason to refuse it.
3. No time limit can properly be implied into regulation 32(2). The absence of an express limit contrasts with the time limits for regulatory appeals. The fact that judicial review could have been brought earlier, or would now face delay difficulties, is not itself a lawful reason to refuse consent.
4. Delay remains relevant to the assessment of the underlying merits. It may show that a fair reconsideration is impossible, for example because medical records have been lost. Longer delay may justify more anxious scrutiny of whether the application is reasonably capable of fair resolution.
5. Process costs may be considered only insofar as they bear on whether an application is frivolous, vexatious or otherwise unmeritorious. Anticipated liability for increased pensions, including wider budgetary consequences, is irrelevant.
6. The 2006 PMAB review had a strong arguable case of unlawfulness because it revisited causation and earlier clinical findings, although regulation 37 confined the review to whether the degree of disablement had substantially altered. The court also considered, but did not need to determine, that refusal of reconsideration was incompatible with the claimant’s A1P1 rights under the ECHR. The Disability Discrimination Act issue was left undecided.