What is an Injury On Duty?
This is defined under the following regulations –
- The Police (Injury Benefit) Regulations 2006
An injury award is defined in the following regulation –
11.—(1) This regulation applies to a person who ceases or has ceased to be a member of a police
force and is permanently disabled as a result of an injury received without his own default in the
execution of his duty
In simple terms, this means that if you received a permanent injury as a result of perfoming the role of a police officer (which includes travelling to and from work), and that injury has affected your future earning capacity, then you are entitled to apply for an injury pension. You can only be granted an injury award after you have left the police service as it is designed to compensate you for your loss of future earnings.
As with ill-health retirement, the PPA will ask the SMP the following questions –
- whether the person concerned is disabled, and
- whether the disablement is likely to be permanent, and
- whether the disablement is the result of an injury received in the execution of duty, and
- the degree of the person’s disablement.
As with ill-health retirement they would expect you to have exhausted all avenues of appropriate treatment if it would improve your condition before permanency is considered. If your ill-health retirement was for the same injury, then the SMP only needs to address the last two questions.
If the SMP considers that you are entitled to an injury award, you will receive a one off lump sum payment (gratuity) and an annual injury pension. The SMP will place you into one four bands of disability –
- band 1 – slight disablement
- band 2 – minor disablement
- band 3 – major disablement
- band 4 – very severe disablement
Your injury pension is calculated based on your banding, the length of your pensionable service, your annual salary and the value of certain other police pensions that you may receive. It is payable immediately and will be index linked, that is, it will be annually increased to keep pace with inflation.
Neither the gratuity or the pension is taxed.
Once an injury pension has been awarded, it cannot be taken away. It is possible to revise the level of disability, but even if this drops to 0%, this will still be band 1.
Summary
Injury awards have developed into a complex subject over the years with much case law in this area. It would be impossible to cover everything in this brief introduction. There are no national forms for requesting an injury award, or statutory time scales, but we would like think that all forces do take all such applications seriously and deal with them expeditiously.
If you have specific questions regarding injury on duty pensions, then please drop us a line and we’ll do our best to answer you.