PSNI

PSNI/RUC Injury Awards and Appeals

IODPA Admin PSNI, RUC
PSNI/RUC Injury Awards and Appeals

IODPA is a UK based charity that supports injured officers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Until recently PSNI and RUC officers have been well supported by other methods. As that support has now dissipated we have attended Belfast to hold a number of exploratory meetings. I think it’s fair to say, that we’re shocked at what we found.

First, it may be worth explaining that whilst England and Wales have The (Police Injury) Benefit Regulations 2006, Scotland have The Police (Injury Benefit) (Scotland) Regulations 2007 and Northern Ireland have the POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND AND POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND RESERVE (INJURY BENEFIT) REGULATIONS 2006, they have their differences.

The Regulations for England/Wales and Scotland are virtually identical, the NI Regulations differ in their appeal process. The process for England/Wales/Scotland is an appeal to a Police Medical Appeal Board (PMAB) which is a panel of doctors, one of whom is usually a medial specialist in the appropriate field for the applicant.

Appeals in NI are made through the Department of Justice (DOJ) to an Independent Medical Referee (IMR). A further appeal can be made to a ‘tribunal’. The Secretary of State, on receiving such notice of appeal, shall appoint an appeal tribunal .. consisting of three persons, including a barrister or solicitor of not less than seven years’ standing and a retired police officer or retired member of a police force in Great Britain who, before he retired, held a rank not lower than that of superintendent.

The other main difference is that the awards are administered by the Northern Ireland Policing Board (NIPB) rather than a Police Pension Authority (PPA).

On first analysis the main problems that we perceive are as follows –

  • Some appeals have been pending for 2, 3, 4, 5 years or more!!! This is disgraceful.
  • Interference by the NIPB in the judicial process as demonstrated by the case of JUSTIN CHADWICK AND ANDREW HARVISON FOR JUDICIAL REVIEW AND IN THE MATTER OF DECISIONS OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND POLICING BOARD.
  • We hear that the two SMPs also act as the IMRs but are supposed to be independent to each other. It appears that they work from the same office effectively marking each others homework.
  • No choice of solicitors for members. We believe members deserve a choice and to be able to choose solicitors and know they will be pro-active in their cases.
  • In 2014, the NIPB commissioned a report from David Scoffield QC into the injury regulations and their processes at the time, some of which they still cling onto today. One such recommendation is that SMPs should not make any sort of financial comparison in order to determine loss of earning capacity. Whilst this advice and methodology is not outside of the regulations, it means that the SMP makes a determination regarding banding without any documented rationale, which means that it cannot be scrutinised or challenged.
  • England/Scotland/Wales have an equal spread of the four injury bands (1-4) whilst a band 4 is rarely awarded in NI.
  • The NIPB have recently put SMP guidance on a statutory footing. The guidance is 8 years old and contains case law which is equally out of date. It is not known what the update process is for these guidelines, or what safeguards there are for pensioners. Even though we don’t agree with them, it is ironic that they don’t adhere to their own guidelines.

We are currently considering a number of legal challenges to the processes and will update our members shortly with how you can assist with funding.

If there are Northern Ireland officers/pensioners that are in the process that haven’t yet made contact with us or attended our meeting please use the ‘contact’ form on our website.

We will be publishing a series of blogs over the coming weeks with more information.

 

PSNI consultation on changing the injury regulations

IODPA Admin newsflash, PSNI
PSNI

PSNIIt has been brought to our attention that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (‘PSNI’) have released a consultation paper on changing the long established “POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND AND POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND RESERVE (INJURY BENEFIT) REGULATIONS 2006″. We say long established because the regulations have been in their current form one way or another for 50 years.

It appear as though the consultation is driven by a paper released by the Northern Ireland Audit Office (‘NIAO’) entitled “Injury on duty schemes for officers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Prison Service” dated 10th March 2020.

The driving force behind this review is unequivocally money and complains that the scheme is not sustainable in its current form. The NIAO paper complains about the costs of back-dating awards without exploring the reasons why injured officers are not being paid the correct level of pension to start with.

It goes onto to complain (on three occasions) that an officer with an injury award may have a pension that is larger than an officer that has completed their service uninjured, oblivious to the fact that the pension is designed in this way as it has to take into account the future loss of earning capacity, whilst the uninjured officer can seek unfettered future employment.

The consultation ends on the 17th June 2024, and IODPA has drafted a response on behalf of our members in PSNI. We’d be pleased to hear your comments on the nine questions posed. Please put your thoughts in the comments.

 

Read the consultation here –

 

 

Read the NIAO paper here –

 

Ex-PSNI officers win court battle over injury award refusal

IODPA Admin newsflash, PSNI, Review, Scoffield
PSNI

PSNITwo former PSNI officers have won a High Court battle over being refused enhanced injury awards.

A judge quashed a decision by the Northern Ireland Policing Board to reject independent medical assessments on the level of their disablement.

Mr Justice Scoffield held that the authority misdirected itself on the meaning of relevant regulations and signalled that both cases should be reconsidered.

The Policing Board’s Resources Committee considered the IMR reports but refused the appeals, stating that the process applied was not consistent with current guidance.

Lawyers for the two officers claimed the decision was unlawful and irrational.

Ruling on the challenge, Mr Justice Scoffield held there was an obligation on the Board to treat the relevant medical practitioner’s certificate as determinative and to give effect to those decisions.

As reported by: Belfast Telegraph – https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/courts/ex-psni-officers-win-court-battle-over-injury-award-refusal/1232935568.html

 

Possible Pension Miscalculations in PSNI – Update

IODPA Admin newsflash, PSNI
PSNI

PSNI

On 2nd October 2019, we published a news item regarding concerns over substantial underpayments of ill-health pensions by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (‘PSNI’).

You can read the original article here – https://iodpa.org/2019/10/02/possible-pension-miscalculations-in-psni/

In summary, a number of officers who had joined under the Police Pension Scheme 1988 (‘PPS 1988’), and retired under the Police Pension Scheme 2015 (‘PPS 2015’) thought that their pensions appeared on the low side.

After making contact with us, we recalculated their pensions, which PSNI subsequently confirmed were closer to their true value. We understand that two officers alone had back payments in the region of £80,000 between them.

Disappointingly, last week, we were contacted by another former officer over the same issue. We calculated that they too had been under paid and were due a back payment of approximately £20,000. PSNI confirmed our findings and agreed to put matters right in their May 2020 pension payment.

These are not small sums of money and as this matter was first brought to the attention of the PSNI over five months ago, we are truly shocked that they don’t appear to have either identified those pensioners that may have been affected or written to those former officers to inform them that they may have had their pensions miscalculated.

We have written to the Finance and Support Services Department of the PSNI asking them to expedite this matter.

 

 

 

Possible Pension Miscalculations in PSNI

IODPA Admin newsflash, PSNI
PSNI

PSNIWe were recently contacted by a retired officer from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (‘PSNI’) regarding an ill-health pension calculation from two years ago. The officer had joined the service under the Police Pension Scheme 1988 (‘PPS 1988’), and retired under the Police Pension Scheme 2015 (‘PPS 2015’).

A calculation had been given to the officer in question who immediately thought the sums given appeared on the low side. They had already contacted the force once and were informed that the figures were correct.

The officer had been given figures for a combined pension under the two aforementioned schemes of just a little under £12,000 p.a. We provided them with our calculations, which revealed that the true figure should have been £18,000 p.a. This was a staggering difference of some £6,000 p.a. since they started receiving their pension.

Of course this figure not only affected their annual pension, but would also make a significant difference to any commutation taken.

Now armed with what we believed to be the correct calculation, the former officer contacted the force again, and we are pleased to say that the force now conceded that they had miscalculated this officer’s pension. The officer is to receive back payment of the missing amount.

This begs the question, has every pension calculation since the introduction of the PPS 2015 been wrong? And it may not just be under this scheme alone, ordinary and deferred pensions may have been miscalculated as well?

If anyone else would like to do a calculation for them, can you please complete the form found here – https://iodpa.org/contact/

Here is a list of standard questions that we’d need answers to in order to work out your figures –

  1. What type of pension i.e. ordinary, deferred or ill-health
  2. Date of joining
  3. Date of leaving
  4. Date of birth
  5. Whether you brought any pensionable service from a previous occupation
  6. Which police pension you joined under (PPS 1987, NPPS 2006)
  7. Which police pension scheme you retired under (PPS 1987, NPPS 2006, PPS 2015)
  8. If now a member of the PPS 2015, what date you transferred to this scheme (the default date is 01/04/2015)
  9. If now a member of the PPS 2015 the value of your pension pot in the 2015 scheme (if not known, I’ll estimate it)
  10. If retiring under the NPPS 2006 or the PPS 2015, whether you were granted upper or lower tier ill health retirement
  11. Annual salary upon retiring
  12. Whether you took a commutation, and if so what percentage (1-25)
  13. If awarded an injury pension, what band were you given

We have already had a number of enquiries over this matter, so please allow us time to respond.

UPDATE: We have confirmed a second case of maladministration, where the pensioner has now recovered tens of thousands of pounds.

 

 

Scoffield recommendations

iodpa caselaw, PSNI, Scoffield
Scoffield recommendations

“God   … [ Scoffield ] … has written His divine guidelines for your life right in the Bible  … [ Report to the Northern Ireland Police Board ] … ”
― Elizabeth George (misquoted)

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redacted_version_of_scoffield_report

Recommendation 8:
In the course of development of this further guidance, serious consideration should be given to abandoning the currently recommended method of calculating percentage disablement, including detailed reliance on the ASHE survey and comparison with the officer’s notional uninjured police salary, in favour of a much more basic approach, whereby the relevant medical authority would simply make a judgment in the round as to the severity of the impact of the duty injury on the officer’s earning capacity, so as to select the officer’s appropriate band without the need to calculate a specific percentage disablement figure.

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Recommendation 10:
The guidance should also provide SMPs and IMRs1 with more detailed assistance, in as straightforward language as possible and drawing upon recent case-law, on how to avoid impermissibly revisiting matters finally determined in previous certificates and applying the concept of apportionment.

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Recommendation 11:
There should be a move away from automatic review for all cases at any fixed interval set in policy. The judgment as to when a review is appropriate should be made on a more case-sensitive basis, driven particularly by medical advice on this issue from the SMP and/or IMR  (although it ought to remain open to an officer to request a review himself at any time and the Board should also retain the right to initiate a review at any time if information comes to its attention identifying an apparent relevant change in circumstances). SMPs and IMRs should expressly be asked to provide the Board with advice on this issue in their completion of reports.

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Recommendation 14:
Those officers who were told in clear terms that they would not be subject to review, or words to that effect, should not be further reviewed in the absence of a request from them or some compelling reason why a review is considered appropriate (such a reason not to include merely their attainment of a particular age).

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Recommendation 15:
SMPs and IMRs should not be precluded in future from designating a case as one for no further review but this should occur only very rarely and guidance should be formulated for them as to when this may be appropriate.

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1 IMR = Independent Medical Referee PSNI equivalent to a Police Medical Appeals Board (PMAB)

The Scoffield Report

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The Scoffield Report

The Police Service of Northern Ireland has the same worded Injury Benefit Regulations as England and Wales.  The statute has a different name ( POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND AND POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND RESERVE (INJURY BENEFIT) REGULATIONS 2006)  but the content is identical to the mainland’s PIBR 2006.  Given the fact that serving PSNI police officers face a high number of incidents of public disorder along with the unique policing challenges of Northern Ireland it is not surprising that the province has a high proportion of Injury on duty awards.  The system of injury duty applications and reviews however were in chaos.  Largely due to the Police Board’s insistence on invoking Home Officer Circular 46/2004 but also with the number of applications compounded by the frequency those retired were called back for reviews.  The whole system was broken and the consequences of recent case-law (Simpson et al)  finding that the guidance it has imposed on it’s former officers was unlawful, was the proverbial straw .  Something had to be done.  David Scoffield QC was asked to write an independent report on the  administrative process concerning IOD awards:

https://www.nipolicingboard.org.uk/scoffield-review-injury-duty-award-scheme

Following a number of concerns raised by former officers and various representative groups a decision was taken by the Board in March 2013 to suspend the review of IOD awards. A working group chaired by the Board’s Chief Executive and comprising of various stakeholders was also established.

In July 2013 the Board agreed to engage Senior Counsel to review the Board’s existing administrative process within the current statutory and policy framework. Mr David Scoffield QC was appointed to carry out the review. Terms of reference for the review were provided to Mr Scoffield QC.

The broken processes in PSNI are no different to what is happening in England and Wales other than the same issue has reached critical mass sooner given the higher number of IOD awards.  The Senior Council review has the same relevance on both sides of the Irish sea.

There was some attempt by the establishment to not publicly disclose the fully published report.  Pressure from interested parties managed to  overturn this and here it is:

redacted_version_of_scoffield_report

Over the next few weeks we will be discussing the points raised by the Scoffield report in more detail.