Section 38: Blind person’s allowance
148.This section deals with the conditions for blind person’s allowance. It is based on sections 256(1), 265 and 278 of ICTA.
149.As with the personal allowances, the residence requirement has been built into subsection (1). In fact, due to the particular conditions of the relief set out in the following subsections, it is very rare for a non-resident to be entitled to the allowance.
150.Section 265(1) of ICTA requires the claimant to be a “registered blind person”. This term is defined in section 265(7) in two legs.
151.The first leg refers to registers compiled under section 29 of the National Assistance Act 1948. That Act never applied to Northern Ireland and was repealed in relation to Scotland by the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 (section 95(2) and Part 1 of Schedule 9). It follows that any registers maintained by local authorities in Scotland or Northern Ireland or by Societies for the Blind on their behalf are not registers under section 29. So subsection (2) makes it clear that this condition can only apply to registers kept by local authorities in England and Wales.
152.The second leg of the definition in section 265(7), which applies only to Scotland and Northern Ireland, refers to persons who are blind within the meaning of section 64(1) of the National Assistance Act 1948. This definition, which is that the individual is unable to do any work for which eyesight is essential, is the same as that underpinning entitlement to registration by local authorities in England and Wales, and is set out in subsection (3).
153.Subsection (4) legislates ESC A86. This treats a claimant as satisfying the registration condition in the year prior to formal registration where evidence of blindness on which registration is based had been obtained in that prior year. See Change 6 in Annex 1.
