CW v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

An aid or appliance for personal independence payment need not be specially designed, made or sold for disabled people. An ordinary household item may qualify if it improves, provides or replaces an impaired physical or mental function.

However, the aid must assist with a function required to carry out the relevant activity or aspect of it in a normal manner. It is insufficient that the claimant is limited only in one optional manner of performing the activity. An item that people without limitation would usually or normally use for that aspect of the activity does not, without more, overcome the consequences of impaired function.

The claimant appealed from the First-tier Tribunal's decision of 17 August 2015, reference SC053/15/00232. The tribunal restored an award of the standard-rate mobility component of personal independence payment, but rejected entitlement to the daily living component.

She contended that, because of impaired balance, she needed to sit on her bed to put on and remove jeans. Her representative submitted that the bed was an aid or appliance for dressing and undressing. Permission to appeal was granted on whether a bed could be an aid for that activity.

The Upper Tribunal also considered the correctness and scope of NA v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2015] UKUT 0572 (AAC). The central issue was the connection required between an aid, an impaired function and the particular personal independence payment activity.

1. The claimant's appeal was dismissed. The First-tier Tribunal had not erred in law in refusing points under the dressing-and-undressing descriptor.
2. The definition in regulation 2 of the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013 does not require an aid or appliance to have been specially designed, made or sold for the relevant purpose. An ordinary item may be an aid when it is used to improve, provide or replace an impaired function. The separate definition of an orientation aid as a specialist aid confirmed that specialist status was not generally required.
3. There must nevertheless be a connection between the aid and the particular activity or descriptor. The aid must overcome the consequences of an impaired function involved in carrying out that activity. The function must be required for the relevant aspect of the activity, rather than merely one of several possible ways in which it may be performed.
4. The appropriate inquiry was whether the item would usually or normally be used by a person without limitation in carrying out that aspect of the activity. If so, its use does not itself show that it is overcoming an impaired function. A person who sits on a chair or bed while dressing may be using a usual and normal method of dressing for convenience, rather than an aid for the statutory purpose.
5. On the evidence, the claimant sat to deal with jeans because of impaired balance. Balance was not required to dress or undress in a normal manner, since sitting was itself normal. She therefore did not need an aid or appliance within descriptor 6(b). The tribunal's approach, although expressed differently, reached that result lawfully.
6. The Secretary of State also submitted, and the claimant conceded, that the mobility-component award involved an error of law. The formal decision remained that the First-tier Tribunal decision did not involve an error of law.

• Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber): The claimant's appeal was dismissed. The First-tier Tribunal decision was held not to involve an error on a point of law.
• First-tier Tribunal: On 17 August 2015, reference SC053/15/00232, the tribunal restored the standard-rate mobility component but upheld refusal of the daily living component.