Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v DS (SPC): [2025] UKUT 158 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision by Judge Wright on 23 May 2025.
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Judicial Summary
This is a decision about the start date for entitlement to the state pension where that pension is claimed after the claimant reached their pensionable age, which in this case was their 66th birthday. The claimant claimed his state pension a year after reaching his pensionable age. In the on-line claim form he set out clearly that he wished to get his state pension from the date of his 67th birthday. The claim was decided by the Secretary of State on the same day as it was made on-line. The decision awarded the claimant his state pension from his 67th birthday with an additional weekly amount of ‘Extra State Pension’ because he had deferred claiming the state pension for one year. The claimant had, however, intended to claim his state pension from his 66th birthday. He had been in time to make a backdated claim to the state pension from his 66th birthday and would have received an arrears payment of one year’s entitlement had he done so. The 67th birthday date he gave on the claim form was a mistake. The First-tier Tribunal (FTT) allowed the appeal on the basis that the Secretary of State’s decision could be revised on any ground so as to correct this mistake.
The decision allows the Secretary of State’s appeal and concludes that the decision could not be changed so as to correct the ‘mistaken’ date the claimant gave on the claim form. The date the claimant gave was clear and did not require any further investigation or clarification. It showed the claimant had chosen to defer entitlement to his state pension for one year, a choice which was deliberately built into the statutory scheme and reflected a focus on claimant autonomy as from when they would wish entitlement to their state pension to arise. That choice would be dependent on a variety of factors of which the claimant rather than the Secretary of State would be aware. Once the claim had been decided it ceased to exist (section 8(2)(a) Social Security Act 1998) and the claim could only be amended before it had been decided (regulation 5(1) Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1987. In these circumstances and absent anything else in the statutory scheme governing entitlement to the state pension that allowed the start of entitlement to be changed once the entitlement decision had ben made, the FTT had been wrong in law in considering the start date could be changed. Moreover, nothing in the Court of Appeal’s decision in SSWP v Miah [2024] EWCA Civ 186 affected this analysis. In addition, insofar as the FTT criticised the Secretary of State for not investigating with the claimant when he wanted his state pension entitlement to begin before the claim was decided, it erred in law in considering such an investigative duty arose.