Cockburn v Chief Adjudication Officer
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 30 July 1996 |
| Date | 30 July 1996 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Court of Appeal
Social security - day attendance allowance - 'bodily function'
The extra work involved in dealing with additional laundry resulting from incontinence was not to be regarded as "frequent attention throughout the day in connection with [a] bodily function" for the purposes of section 64(2)(a) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 and thus did not satisfy the day attendance allowance condition.
The Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Butler-Sloss, Lord Justice Peter Gibson and Lord Justice Thorpe) so held on June 26 in dismissing an appeal by Mrs Cockburn against a decision of the Chief Adjudication Officer which overturned a decision of the Disability Attendance Tribunal and refused an application for daytime attendance allowance.
LORD JUSTICE BUTLER-SLOSS said that a line had to be drawn somewhere and it was clearly drawn in R v National Insurance Commissioners, Ex parte Secretary of State for Social ServicesWLR ([1981] 1 WLR 1017) and In re WoodlingWLR ([1984] 1 WLR 348) between cooking, shopping and housework such as cleaning and laundry on the one hand and, on the other, close personal attention such as helping get in and out of bed, eating, drinking, bathing, washing hair, going to the lavatory.
To find otherwise would be to fail to recognise the restricted and precise meaning of the phrase "bodily functions" or the high degree of physical intimacy between the giver and receiver of attention required by Lord Bridge in In re Woodling.
Court of Appeal
Before Lord Justice Glidewell, Lord Justice Hobhouse and Lord Justice Swinton Thomas
Social security - disability living allowance - attention reasonably required from another person
A woman born deaf was entitled under section 72(1)(b)(i) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 to disability living allowance for attention reasonably required from another person to enable her to carry out a reasonable level of social activity.
The Court of Appeal so held by a majority in a reserved judgment dismissing an appeal by the Secretary of State for Social Security against the decision of a Social Security Commissioner, Mr R A Sanders, given in favour of the claimant, Miss Rebecca Fairey, also known as Halliday, on that issue, on October 14, 1994. The commissioner referred the case...
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- Cockburn v Chief Adjudication Officer
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Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v June Batty
...connection with his bodily functions" has troubled the courts on a number of previous occasions. The Commissioner's reference to the case of Cockburn is to Cockburn v Chief Adjudication Office [1997] 1 WLR 799, which is the last of a trio of decisions of the House of Lords on the meaning a......
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Gregory Ramsden and The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
...normal health would not have that requirement. We exclude the subsequent laundry of his soiled clothes from consideration ( Cockburn v Chief Adjudication Officer– House of Lords 21 May 1997). On Mrs Ramsden's evidence, this attention is sometimes required in the morning when he gets up and ......