“(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 Schedule 3 referred to as the “relevant injury”). (2) A person to whom this regulation applies shall be entitled to a gratuity and, in addition, to an injury pension…”
‘any injury or disease, whether of body or of mind.’
“(1) A reference in these Regulations to an injury received in the execution of duty by a member of a police force means an injury received in the execution of that person's duty as a constable and, where the person concerned is an auxiliary policeman, during a period of active service as such. (2) For the purposes of these Regulations an injury shall be treated as received by a person in the execution of his duty as a constable if— (a) the member concerned received the injury while on duty or while on a journey necessary to enable him to report for duty or return home after duty, or (b) he would not have received the injury had he not been known to be a constable, or . . .].” (a) the member concerned received the injury while on duty or while on a journey necessary to enable him to report for duty or return home after duty, or (b) he would not have received the injury had he not been known to be a constable, or . . .].”
“The decision of the board of medical referees shall, if it disagrees with any part of the report of the selected medical practitioner, be expressed in the form of a report of its decision on any of the questions referred to the selected medical practitioner on which it disagrees with the latter's decision, and the decision of the board of medical referees shall, subject to the provisions of regulation 32, be final.”
“The events leading up to retirement consisted of what he described as malicious allegation against him while he was working in the House of Parliament. He was made subject of an internal investigation by the police, felt betrayed by his colleagues and treated like a criminal. He felt a mixture of anger, frustration and hopelessness at fighting against a seemingly implacable system. 'Opinion: Mr Stunt suffered a severe depressive illness following proceedings brought against him [in 1993] and to some extent he is suffering from the after effects of this . . . The disablement is not strictly speaking the result of an injury received in the execution of Mr Stunt's duty but does arrive [sic] as a result of his reaction to the internal proceedings brought against him.' . . .”
“In a supplemental report dated8 January 1999 , Dr Mallett said this: “Mr Stunt's problems arise from both the fact that he feels it was a 'terrible wrong' that the investigation took place at all, mainly because he felt he conducted himself appropriately and this should have been clear to anyone taking an unbiased view of the situation and in addition, he feels he has a genuine grievance about the way in which the investigation was conducted once it started. He formed a strong impression that conclusions were drawn before the investigation even started, that the investigating officers had made up their mind and that this view is backed-up by the fact that he was strongly encouraged by the Investigation Team to plead guilty to the allegations and that they even spoke to his daughter at one point to encourage her to try and persuade him to change his mind.”
“(1) Regulation [6(2)] does not purport to contain, nor should it be read as containing, an exhaustive definition of the circumstances in which an injury may be received in the execution of a person's duty as a constable. Thus in principle a case may fall within regulation [6(1)] and thereby qualify for an award even if it does not fall within regulation [6(2)]. Leaving aside for one moment the applicant's contention in the present case, I doubt whether the point is of great practical significance, since a person who receives an injury ‘in the execution of [his] duty’ (in the basic meaning of that expression) is likely generally to receive it ‘while on duty’ within the meaning of regulation [6(2)(a)]: the latter extends beyond the former but also encompasses the generality of cases falling within the former. (A full exposition would require reference to the additional deeming provisions of regulation [6(3) to (6)], but I have not thought it necessary to deal with them in this judgment since they do not appear to me to affect the overall position.) (2) When considering a case of mental stress or psychiatric illness amounting to an injury and said to have arisen over a period of time (as opposed to, for example, post-traumatic stress syndrome said to arise out of a single event), it will probably be impossible in practice to draw any clear distinction between regulation [6(1)] and regulation [6(2)(a)]. It makes no difference in any event whether one looks at the matter in terms of the one rather than the other. The test to be applied is the same. That is why one finds the authorities either failing to distinguish clearly between the two provisions or applying in the context of the one a test developed in the context of the other. (3) The test remains that set out in Garvin v London (City) Police Authority[1944] KB 358 and summarised in Huddersfield Police Authority v Watson[1947] KB 842 as being whether the person's injury ‘is directly and causally connected with his service as a police officer’. It is a test formulated originally in the context of a physical disease contracted over a period of time, but aptly and repeatedly applied in the corresponding context of a psychiatric condition arising over a period of time. One can readily see why that test is applicable as much under regulation [6(2)(a)] as under regulation [6(1)]. When considering such a psychiatric condition, which cannot be attributed to a single identifiable event or moment of time, it is plainly necessary to find a causal connection with service as a police officer in order to establish that the injury has been received ‘while on duty’ rather than while off duty, just as it is necessary to find such a causal connection in order to establish that the injury has been received ‘in the execution of duty’. (4) The test of causation is not to be applied in a legalistic way. The concept is relatively straightforward, as Latham J observed in Bradley v London Fire and Civil Defence Authority[1995] IRLR 46 —this was an analogous case of a fireman — and falls to be applied by medical rather than legal experts. In particular, in my view, the reference to a ‘direct’ causal link does not mean that fine distinctions may be drawn between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ causes of the injury. The reference derives from the statement in Garvin’s case that the injury was the ‘direct result of, and, therefore, suffered in, the execution of duty’. That language was used, as it seems to me, as a means of emphasising the existence of a substantial causal connection between the injury and the person's service as a police officer. The point was to distinguish such a situation, which qualified for an award, from the case where the receipt of an injury and service as a police officer were entirely coincidental rather than connected circumstances, which did not qualify for an award. (5) The causal connection must be with the person's service as a police officer, not simply with his being a police officer (the exception in regulation [6(2)(b)] is immaterial to the kind of situation under consideration in the present case). That is inherent in the reference to ‘duty’ in regulation [6(1)] and regulation [6(2)(a)]. At the same time, however, ‘duty’ is not to be given a narrow meaning. It relates not just to operational police duties but to all aspects of the officer's work—to the officer's ‘work circumstances’, as it was put in R v Fagin, Ex p Mountstephen (unreported)26 April 1996 . I have referred in general terms to the person's service as a police officer because it seems to me to be an appropriate way of covering the point, but the precise expression used is unimportant. In any event it is sufficient in my view to find a causal connection with events experienced by the officer at work, whether inside or outside the police station or police headquarters, and including such matters as things said or done to him by colleagues at work. In so far as the applicant contended for an even greater degree of connection with a person's performance of his functions as a police officer, I reject the contention. (6) It is sufficient for there to be a causal connection with service as a police officer. It is not necessary to establish that work circumstances are the sole cause of the injury. Mental stress and psychiatric illnesses may arise out of a combination of work circumstances and external factors (most obviously, domestic circumstances). What matters is that the work circumstances have a causative role. The work circumstances and domestic circumstances may be so closely linked as to make it inappropriate to compartmentalise them, as in R v Court, Ex p Derbyshire Police Authority (unreported)11 October 1994 , where the so-called ‘private matters’ were held to be intimately connected with the officer's ‘public duty’. But I do not read the authorities as laying down any more general rule against compartmentalisation. On the other hand, where compartmentalisation is possible (ie, in the absence of an intimate connection between the private matters and the public duty), I do not read the authorities as laying down any rule that the existence of a causal connection with the private matters is fatal to a claim. Provided that there is also a causal connection with the public duty, the test is satisfied. (7) It may be that what I have said about the sufficiency of a causal connection with service as a police officer should be qualified by a reference to a substantial causal connection. The requirement of substantiality does not appear to feature in the authorities (subject to my observation about the significance of the reference to a direct causal connection). But that is unsurprising, since there does not seem to have been any real suggestion that the causes in issue were anything other than substantial causes. Similarly in the present case I do not think that anything turns in practice on the issue of substantiality. I therefore think it unnecessary to say any more about the point for the purposes of the case.”
“…There is one common element in each case in which the injury was held to have been sustained “in the execution of duty”
“Sympathetic though I am to police officers for the particular risk of disciplinary proceedings they run by the very nature of their office, I cannot for my part accept the view that if injury results from subjection to such proceedings it is to be regarded as received in the execution of duty. Rather it seems to me that such an injury is properly to be characterised as resulting from the officer's status as a constable — “simply [from] his being a police officer” to use the language of paragraph 5 of Richards J's conclusions in Kellam[2000] ICR 632 , 645 when pointing up the crucial distinction. This view frankly admits of little elaboration. It really comes to this: however elastic the notion of execution of duty may be, in my judgment it cannot be stretched wide enough to encompass stress-related illness through exposure to disciplinary proceedings. That would lead to an interpretation of regulation [6 PIBR] that the natural meaning of the words just cannot bear.”
“…had Mr Stunt been suspended from duty during the investigation (as many officers are), clearly no such argument would have been available to him. It would be surprising and unsatisfactory if for the purposes of an injury award in circumstances like these a distinction fell to be drawn between those suspended from duty and those continuing at work. In my judgment it does not.”
“For my own part I confess to having difficulty with the distinction drawn in some of the cases between being on duty and being in the execution of duty. In some cases it appears to me that the distinction will be the rationalisation of a particular conclusion rather than a useful tool for analysis. What can be said is that not everything which happens to an officer on duty resulting in an injury involves an injury caused in the execution of duty. The best examples from the case law are probably the depression caused by being in a dead end job or the receipt of disappointing information about future prospects, which may not involve a sufficient causal link. Of course when one is no longer working as a police officer and injury is caused, that cannot be in the execution of duty. There is no authority for the proposition that an injury resulting from the application of a management process cannot be received in the execution of duty. Stress related illness caused by failure properly to supervise or support may qualify. Psychiatric injury from stresses at work, bullying or harassment can be treated as an injury in the execution of duty. So too depression brought about by the appraisal process: Lothian and Borders Police Board v Ward[2004] SLT 215 . Generally speaking, however, the authorities indicate that psychiatric injury from exposure to disciplinary or grievance proceedings, or failed promotion attempts, will not. However, that will not be the invariable outcome, as Stanley Burnton J acknowledged in Gidlow. One can conceive of situations where, for example, psychiatric injury is caused by a baseless allegation being brought against an officer by another member of the force, or by a member of the public. It must be that police officers defending themselves in those circumstances have a strong case for saying that they are acting in the execution of duty because, in a sense, they are defending not only their own integrity but that of the force as a whole.”
“The essential point derived from Stunt appears to me to be that an officer’s psychological reaction to a complaint against him is not an injury received in the execution of his duty...The second point is this: that a psychological reaction to circumstances on duty is not necessarily suffered in the execution of (and perhaps not while on) duty.”
“… I accept Mr Westgate’s submission that the mere fact that an officer is involved in a grievance procedure, or a disciplinary procedure, does not of itself mean that his psychological injury is not suffered in the execution of his duty. The essential point in Stunt was that the officer’s stress resulted from the allegation made and the existence of the disciplinary proceedings that did not vindicate him…”
‘the prolonged process of the court, as well as some management of it affected his emotional stability. He reports that the biggest factor affecting him after he had discovered the CCTV footage was that the police refused to investigate what went wrong. This led to an irrevocable loss of faith and confidence in the police.’ iii) Dr Rajput’s impression is recorded as: ‘Overall, I regard that court process was a major stress for him and had the issues been resolved more amicably and favourably then, even by his own description, he feels that he would still be in the police, however, the prolongation of the whole process and the distress and lack of trust arising from the lack of willingness from the police to investigate how the CCTV footage was managed caused him to develop phobic anxiety disorder.’
‘There appears to be unanimity about his having had a loss of trust in the organisation and that this underpinned his illness and the permanency consideration.’
‘the loss of his career, the reason for the loss of his career, the duplicity of the behaviour of the Metropolitan Police Service, the humiliating experiences he was subjected to, the threat of criminal proceedings, the threat of imprisonment, the threat of civil action against him, being subject to part 20 [proceedings] in the High Court, the threat of extreme financial losses, the discrepancy in the draft and final ‘fairness at work’ report, the failure of the Metropolitan Police Service to pursue charges of gross misconduct as directed by the IPCC and the entries placed on Mr Brown’s ‘personal records’
‘as a dedicated officer, I accept the original allegations in 2007 are likely to have some impact on Mr [Brown] however, the withholding of evidence which subsequently became clear in the criminal trial in October 2009, is likely to have had a significant impact on Mr [Brown’s] psychiatric state. I am therefore able to say it was the withholding of evidence and the subsequent trial of those involved that had a material impact on the overall psychiatric state leading to medical retirement. On balance therefore I anticipate Mr [Brown] would have coped from a psychiatric perspective following the incident in 2007 had the turn of events with evidence having been withheld, not followed.’
“With regards to the behaviour of his ex-colleague PC Onwugbonu, although this was the genesis of the false allegations, the response in the immediate aftermath makes it clear that this by itself is not a substantial contributor to his permanent disablement. He is very distraught at discovering the extent of the allegations but does not fall ill until much later. The enduring illness is better correlated temporally with his loss of trust in the Police Authority as a whole [the aftermath of CCTV issue] Square brackets in the original and his expectations with regard to subsequent placement not being met. Psychiatric injury resulting from a false allegation as made clear in the J Cranston (sic) quote above could also be construed as an injury received in the execution of duty. The argument is made stronger in this instance, given that the period for which there was a cloud over the appellant was very prolonged, and furthermore the support that the appellant would have expected from the organisation is perceived by the appellant to have been absent. The Board does not consider, with due regard to case law, his placement issues following the trial to be a substantial contributor to an injury received in the execution of duty. This recognises that this aspect is inherent to service as a police officer. It appears though that his perception of this event is also a contributor to his eventual permanent disablement. The clinical assessments that are contemporaneous to the time of events support the appellant’s narrative about the part 20 process. The Police Authority have not provided any information or comments in relation to this point. … In this instance the Board is persuaded to accept Mr Brown’s version of events and finds as a matter of fact that these did occur. The Board notes that the appellant’s version of events has not been challenged by the Police Authority, and are also in accord with the independent IPCC investigation report. The Board is also persuaded that these events that he argues have contributed to his psychiatric injury and permanent disablement have indeed done so; and that this was a substantial contribution. The Board regards these events, with the exception of the placement issue, are injuries received in the execution of duty. Finally, the Board finds that even with this exception, the combination of the remaining injuries has substantially contributed to his permanent disablement.”
“In so far as the PMAB found that events or circumstances impacting on the Interested Party after the conclusion of the criminal process and his suspension caused or substantially contributed to his permanent disablement, those events or circumstances were not ‘work circumstances’ as that term was defined in Stunt.”
“In so far as the PMAB found that the Part 20 proceedings instituted by the Claimant against the Interested Party caused or substantially contributed to his permanent disablement, those proceedings were not ‘work circumstances’ as that term was defined in Stunt.”
“(5) If, on an application for judicial review, the High Court quashes the decision to which the application relates, it may in addition— (a) remit the matter to the court, tribunal or authority which made the decision, with a direction to reconsider the matter and reach a decision in accordance with the findings of the High Court, or (b) substitute its own decision for the decision in question. (5A) But the power conferred by subsection (5)(b) is exercisable only if— (a) the decision in question was made by a court or tribunal, (b) the decision is quashed on the ground that there has been an error of law, and (c) without the error, there would have been only one decision which the court or tribunal could have reached.” (a) remit the matter to the court, tribunal or authority which made the decision, with a direction to reconsider the matter and reach a decision in accordance with the findings of the High Court, or (b) substitute its own decision for the decision in question. (a) the decision in question was made by a court or tribunal, (b) the decision is quashed on the ground that there has been an error of law, and (c) without the error, there would have been only one decision which the court or tribunal could have reached.”
“(1) Except where rule 52.7 applies, permission to appeal may be given only where— (a) the court considers that the appeal would have a real prospect of success; or (b) there is some other compelling reason for the appeal to be heard.”
‘The judge erred by misinterpreting the PMAB report which, properly understood, had accepted Mr Brown’s version of events including his assertion that MPS officers had acted maliciously and/or concluding that the PMAB should not have made a finding on the issue of malice whereas this was a finding that they were required to make.’
‘The judge misinterpreted and/or misapplied the existing authorities concerning the test in regulation 30 (2)(c) as to whether a psychiatric illness suffered by a police officer as a response to events at work was the ‘result of an injury received in the execution of duty’
‘The judge erred in law by basing his judgment on a proposition that Mr Brown was an employee of the MPS as well as being a police officer.’
‘The judge erred in considering that the decision by the MPS to bring a Part 20 action against Mr Brown was incapable of being treated by the PMAB as a work circumstance.’
‘The judge erred in his rejection of the Interested Party’s case that the deeming provision under regulation 6 (2)(b) applied to this case.’
‘The judge erred in granting the Claimant permission to proceed on Ground 4 and on a new ground 6.’