Regulation 37

Regulation 32

iodpa caselaw, pmab, reconsideration, regulation 32, Regulation 37, selected medical practitioner
Regulation 32

Everyone in receipt of an Injury on Duty award mostly understands the implications of the discretionary power to review, namely regulation 37.   As described previously on other posts it is frequently an abused power with reviews instigated by the police pension authority, on their whim, so that they can fulfil financial constraint reduction targets.   Rarely does a pensioner with a substantial deterioration in their medical condition request a review themselves – Avon & Somerset has only received 2 self-referred requests for a regulation 37 review in the past 10 years. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pensions_6

The same story is repeated nationally. Too many IODs are living their lives with degenerative conditions brought on by their qualifying injury received in the execution of their duty without wanting to resurrect the pain of dealing with their former force’s bureaucracy.  So they continue on, living on an award banding lower than what they should be entitled to.  The point I’m clumsily trying to make is that if no IOD recipient thinks of requesting a review, it is not surprising to hear that no one knows that there is a power to ask for a reconsideration.

Regulation 32 became more widely known as a direct result of the the unlawfulness of home office circular 46/2004.  Between 2003 and 2009 hundreds of reviews were used to reduce former police officers to the lowest band due to the fact that they had reached the age of 65.  Despite the hardship this caused only a few had the mental strength to appeal and it wasn’t until the first Judicial review in 2009 that the light was shined on the illegality of what had happened.  By then those affected had missed the strict deadlines to lodge appeals.

The case of Haworth explains this clearly.  This was Northumbria again on their mission to ruin lives, guided in their quest by their legal advisor Mr Wirz.  Susan Haworth was retired on an injury on duty award and medical pension in 1995.  In 2005 she was reviewed and had her injury award reduced.  The decision was taken to the police medical appeals board (hearing in 2006) whereupon the board further reduced the award to the lowest band, a band 1.  Both the SMP in 2005 and the board in 2006 revisited causation and unlawfully attempted to claim that Susan had pre-existing conditions and then applied apportionment.  This was not permissible and was outside the task which they had to undertake under regulation 37.  Susan did not take the fight further (she was unaware she could challenge it at the time) until she realised several years later, after Laws V PMAB in 2009, that the decision made against her was unjust.  So in 2010 she sought advice and submitted a request for the 2006 decision to be reconsidered under regulation 32.

Here is an excerpt of the letter from her solicitor requesting the reconsideration:

‘It is against the background of the decisions of the SMP and the PMAB that Mrs Haworth is seeking a reconsideration under Regulation 32(2) of the Police (Injury Benefit) Regulations 2006. The detailed reasons for seeking this review (sic) are set out below, however in essence the decisions of both the SMP and the PMAB were not made in accordance with the relevant regulations , as it is clear that the SMP…..revisited causation as to the original final decision made at the time of Mrs Haworth’s ill heath retirement in May 1995, and the,PMAB ….then proceeded to apply an apportionment, again to a final decision made in May 1995. Both of these decisions are therefore unlawful, and not made accordance with the Injury Benefit Regulations.”

Typically and acting to type, Northumbria refused the reconsideration.  The refusal was taken to judicial review and Haworth won the right to have a her case heard under regulation 32.

The importance of Haworth is not only that it brought to light that a police pension authority needs a robust reason to refuse a request for a reconsideration – more than Northumbria’s claim of “It is important that final decisions, once taken, remain just that” and that Mr Wirz’s submission to the court that ‘re-opening of old-cases will affect the authorities budget’ is irrelevant to the matter at hand .  But also that there is no time limit to restrict the use of regulation 32:

“I cannot accept that it is lawfully open to a police authority to refuse a retired officer its consent to refer a final decision back to a medical authority for reconsideration under regulation 32(2) simply on the grounds of delay, even inordinate delay, in other words passage of time since the decision was made, without any consideration of the underlying merits of the matters which the former officer seeks to pursue on such a consideration”.

The power to demand a reconsideration is therefore unfettered by time and is always available as a viable option.

So what advantage does a reconsideration (reg32) have over a review (reg37)?   If a review (or the original decision that the review is based upon) is using the wrong diagnosis, if there is undue apportionment, if causation is incorrect, if a previous final decision was contrary to regulations; a further review can not fix the fault.  That fault will remain now and in future reviews for eternity – the comparator always is the last final decision whether or not that final decision was wrong. A review is blind to the legitimacy of the last decision.   So the only way to wipe the slate clean and have future reviews looking at the correct factors is to have the previous decision(s) quashed and regulation 32 provides a mechanism for this to happen.

The opening of Pandora’s box

iodpa Regulation 37
The opening of Pandora’s box

“They gave Pandora a box. Prometheus begged her not to open it. She opened it. Every evil to which human flesh is heir came out of it.
The last thing to come out of the box was hope. It flew away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

Its been previously mentioned on these pages that a injured officer is rarely injured out on good terms with their former force.  Quite often management are uncaring and HR professionals become  zealous and officious during the administration of the retirement process.  Then the former officer has to adjust to the outside world without any assistance.  The silence from the force is then deafening – exiled and forgotten. Life moves on, years pass and some resemblance of normality mists over.  Grievances are shelved but not forgotten.  Any thoughts on the major maladministration of the medical retirement  is suspended, if the decision was unlawful, a pragmatic view of letting sleeping dogs lie is the default option for the former officer.

Decades pass.  The force has no intention to invoke any review.  It doesn’t care.  Until it sees a way to save money.

Then the gloves are off.

  • Was the original decision lawful?
  • Did the force summarily dismiss the injured officer on a injury process without following due process?
  • Has any previous review been unlawful?
  • Did the force collude to put the officer on an artificially low banding?
  • Is there a potential of a civil claim – something lurking in the former officer’s personal file that shows the force has acted dishonestly?
  • Will a review re-ignite the mental illness of the former officer?
  • Does Estoppel apply?  Was the former officer promised he/she would never be reviewed?
  • Is the former officer entitled to a gratuity that the force deliberately never told him about when originally retired?

It’s not a simple as ‘there is a duty to review’.  There should be other factors considered and not just ‘We need to cut costs.  The database says the ex officer is a band x.  Lets get the occupational health and personnel files out of storage and call him/her in’.  No matter the former officer has a mental illness aggravated by stress; that there is a PTSD driven phobia about attending police premises; that the former officer is currently on the inpatient waiting list; that the former officer is undergoing a high-stress personal life event.   All these examples are true of Avon & Somerset’s current review process.  And also of untold other forces nationally

Regulation 37

iodpa caselaw, Regulation 37
Regulation 37

The ‘positive duty to review’ and the weapon to ‘protect the public purse’

There’s an introduction to regulation 37 here on the ‘The Regs – and what they mean to you’ page.

It’s quite difficult to explain what is meant by earning capacity and how this is the measure of the degree of disablement.  It’s even harder to convince people that the regs do not directly correlate ‘physical disability’ to its meaning of ‘degree of disablement’.

A problem is that reg37 is silent on the detail on how individual forces shall measure the loss of earning capacity.  It has quite simply stated the banding of slight, minor, major and severe is enough instruction, but just like mankind has a tendency to do, something simple has be turned into something complicated.  The complication is the ‘guidance’ that police forces use in an effort to justify their defiled view of what it is to ‘protect’ the  public purse.

The thing is that to be given an IOD award, a high bar has already been passed.  There are 4 levels of attainment to qualify:

(a)whether the person concerned is disabled;

(b)whether the disablement is likely to be permanent,

(c)whether the disablement is the result of an injury received in the execution of duty, and

(d) the degree of the person’s disablement;

If a former officer has an IOD and ALL of the above wasn’t satisfied (retired off, wink, wink, nudge, nudge…) then that says more about the force that did it than the former officer it was done to.

In reality an injured serving officer lives a  hell once injured.  Treated like a malingerer, put on surveillance, reduced to half pay.  The full weight of bureaucracy is put against them and that injured person has to prove everything – permanence, whether the injury was on duty, whether it was in the execution of their duty and all the rest.  An award may be begrudgingly given.  More than likely a civil claim against the force is ongoing as well as the ‘injury in the execution of their duty’ was down to poor management, being single crewed, having defective equipment. Once gone the retired officer has to justify his or her level of loss of earning capacity when they apply for an award so another fight with the HR department starts.

Now retired, the former officer wants to live their life in peace often with a deep resentment of how they were treated.  But every 2 years a letter pops through their postbox calling them to attend a review of their degree of disablement as the police force claims they have to protect the public purse under regulation 37. The insinuation is that the award is something you have to prove for life.  Not much of an award is it?

It’s no wonder that those retired on the lowest tier, a band 1, who’s condition and earning capacity deteriorates rarely if ever ask for a review.  They haven’t the strength.  It can be said that that are more IOD retirees with a banding lower than is strictly appropriate than a banding higher. But that’s the nature of beast – the SMP gives a subjective figure using his qualified medical judgement. If and when circumstances dictate on review here has been substantial change, in other words an substantial improvement or a substantial deterioration, then a revision is permissible, down a band or up a band respectively.  Retrospective attempts at cost-saving redress by HR and Finance teams because they think in hindsight the original banding wasn’t the right one is unlawful as much as it is it impossible.  The award was given at the Zeitgeist of the original decision and if there is notable substantial alteration it is a SMP alone that performs the revision; not for HR departments to interfere and influence the SMP or to attempt to rewrite history.

Case-law deals with the finality of the banding: Laws Appeal 2010

The result is to provide a high level of certainty in the assessment of police injury pensions. It is not open to the SMP/Board to reduce a pension on a Regulation 37(1) review by virtue of a conclusion that the clinical basis of an earlier assessment was wrong. Equally, of course, they may not increase a pension by reference to such a conclusion; and it is right to note that Mr Butler, appearing for the Board, voiced his client’s concern that so confined an approach to earlier clinical findings might in some cases work to the disadvantage of police pensioners

Imagine a person with PTSD and severe mental illness.  A constant review program will lead the person to being sectioned under the mental health act.  Military veterans aren’t treated with this level of disrespect so why are retired former police officers?