Comparison Exercise
The regulation used to review an existing award is 37(1). A review, or a “reassessment of injury pension” to be more accurate is a comparison exercise from the date of your award, or your last review to the present day. This is confirmed in the case of Metropolitan Police Authority v Laws & Anor [2010] –
para 18 – So much is surely confirmed by the terms of Regulation 37(1), under which the police authority (via the SMP/Board) are to “consider whether the degree of the pensioner’s disablement has altered”. The premise is that the earlier decision as to the degree of disablement is taken as a given; and the duty – the only duty – is to decide whether, since then, there has been a change: “substantially altered”, in the words of the Regulation. The focus is not merely on the outturn figure, but on the substance of the degree of disablement.
This means that the SMP has to identify a substantial alteration in the pensioners disability from the last assessment. A fresh assessment just based on the here and now is not permitted.