BT v Secretary of State for Defence (WP): [2025] UKUT 419 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision by Judge Stout on 15 December 2025.
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Judicial Summary
The appellant had suffered injury to his mental health as a result of the death of his daughter by suicide. He claimed under article 9(1)(c) of The Armed Forces and Reserve Forces (Compensation Scheme) Order 2011 (as amended) that his injury had been worsened by service. The Upper Tribunal holds that the First-tier Tribunal erred in law by failing to consider the requirements of article 9(5) in addition to article 9(1)(c) and therefore failing to focus on the four conditions of entitlement that must be satisfied under those sub-sections. The First-tier Tribunal also reached perverse conclusions on the evidence, including by failing to recognise that there was medical evidence that supported the appellant’s case, and wrongly regarding evidence that the appellant’s mental health condition resulted from his perception of work events as being incapable of constituting evidence that service was the cause of the mental injury. Despite giving itself a proper legal direction that the AFCS is not a fault-based scheme, the Tribunal failed to apply that approach when concluding that the various events that the appellant believed had contributed to the worsening of his mental health were not service causes.