The Social Security (Adjudication) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1995

Oral hearings and inquiries

4.—(1) This regulation applies to any oral hearing of an application, appeal or reference and to any inquiry.

(2) Reasonable notice (being not less than 10 days beginning with the day on which the notice is given and ending on the day before the hearing of the case or, as the case may be, the inquiry is to take place) of the time and place of any oral hearing by an adjudicating authority or of an inquiry shall be given to every party to the proceedings, and where such notice has not been given to a person to whom it should have been given under the provisions of this paragraph the hearing or inquiry may proceed only with the consent of that person.

(3) Where a party to the proceedings to whom notice has been given under paragraph (2) fails to appear at the hearing or inquiry the adjudicating authority or the person holding the inquiry may, having regard to all the circumstances including any explanation offered for the absence, proceed with the case or inquiry notwithstanding his or its absence, or give such directions with a view to the determination of the case or conduct of the inquiry as it or he may think proper.

(4) Any oral hearing by an adjudicating authority and any inquiry shall be in public except where (in the case of an oral hearing) the claimant requests a private hearing or, in any case, the chairman or the person holding the inquiry is satisfied that intimate personal or financial circumstances may have to be disclosed or that considerations of public security are involved, in which case the hearing or inquiry shall be in private.

(5) At any oral hearing or inquiry any party to the proceedings shall be entitled to be present and be heard.

(6) The following persons shall also be entitled to be present at an oral hearing (whether or not it is otherwise in private) but shall take no part in the proceedings—

(a) the President and any full-time chairman;

(b) any person undergoing training as a chairman or other member of an appeal tribunal, a medical appeal tribunal or a disability appeal tribunal, or as a clerk to any such tribunal, or as an adjudication officer or an adjudicating medical practitioner;

(c) any person acting on behalf of the President, the Chief Adjudication Officer or the Department in the training or supervision of clerks to appeal tribunals, medical appeal tribunals or disability appeal tribunals or of adjudication officers or officers of the Department or in the monitoring of standards of adjudication by adjudication officers; and

(d) with the leave of the chairman of the tribunal or board, as the case may be, and the consent of every party to the proceedings actually present, any other person.

(7) At any inquiry (whether or not it is otherwise in private) the following persons shall be entitled to be present but shall take no part in the proceedings—

(a) any person undergoing training as an officer of the Department;

(b) any person acting on behalf of the Department in the training or supervision of officers of the Department; and

(c) with the leave of the person holding the inquiry and the consent of every party to the proceedings actually present, any other person.

(8) Nothing in paragraph (6) affects the rights of any person mentioned in sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of that paragraph at any oral hearing where he is sitting as a member of the tribunal or acting as its clerk, and nothing in this regulation prevents the presence at an oral hearing or inquiry of any witness.

(9) Any person entitled to be heard at an oral hearing or inquiry may address the adjudicating authority or person holding the inquiry, may give evidence, may call witnesses and may put questions directly to any other person called as a witness.