The letter from the Service Personnel & Veterans Agency arrived yesterday.
'We are sorry to inform you ... not entitled ...'
However, they then state:
'We have accepted the following diagnosed condition as being caused by your service.
BILATERAL NOISE INDUCED SENSORINEURAL HEARING LOSS
But we cannot pay you for this condition ...', etc, etc.
I think I'll pass on the letter to the RBL and see what they say, i.e. is it worth appealing.
"Is it worth appealing?" answer is yes but not to the Veterans Agency, let RBL know what they have said and ask for their advice/ help!
The veterans agency won't pay you a war pension or compensate you under the compensation package because they either don't consider you to be at least 20% disabled, which you probably aren't if you think about it - although the process is a pathetic effort to objectively measure something which is subjective - just what is 100% disabled? or your hearing loss; which because it is noise induced will be in the high frequency range, doesn't fall within their definition of "high frequency" Rules is rules and they have already made this decision based on your application and their criteria, it doesn't mean they aren't liable though!
They have accepted that your deafness is noise induced and due to your time in service which is a good step forward. Their defence is that they did everything they practically could to protect you from the inherent risk of working around aircraft............ so you need to ask yourself this question.... did they?
I don't believe they did, personally in my career on Harriers I can remember wearing the old low attenuation yellow ear defenders (which we had to drill a whole in and attach a nut and bolt to prevent them falling apart and becoming a FOD hazard, drilling holes in ear defenders can't be a good thing) these were then officially deemed as inadequate and they were replaced with a new yellow ear defender (medium attenuation) which in turn was deemed inadequate and we were told to also use the foam EAR protection in addition. Since then I can remember 2 new types of green defender one with (Peltor's high attenuation duffs, but still not their highest level of protection) and one without a yellow band (peltor medium attenuation) You may wish to go to Peltor's website and review the protection offered by their low, medium amd high attenuation hearing protection and then compare these to the noise levels you were exposed to.
Now they have obviously replaced ear defenders as and when they realised they were inadequate but these have always been issued across the board and none have been procured specifically for the Harrier and its particular noise footprint. Pilots have been trialled with noise cancelling hearing protection on Harriers because the problem was known to the MoD. BAe have of course always had a superior type of hearing protection to that issued in service and interestingly the yanks seem to have been through this whole issue and have a superior form of hearing protection so.............. if the yanks and the aircraft builders had different hearing protection for use on the Harrier why didn't we? Did the MoD do their best to protect my hearing, no, they could have done better.
Speak to RBL they will run your case for free if you choose to pursue it, gather as much information as you can, preferably documented but speak to your mates and see if they can remember dates etc then take them on and don't accept their first out of court offer (which will be offered if your case is fairly strong, they don't really want a precedent from which others can easily build a case on this matter because it will open the floodgates.)
If you don't want to pursue the case at least speak to RBL about the importance of the declaration, noise induced hearing loss doesn't stop when you stop working in a noisy environment the damage done to the fine hairs in you ear cannot be undone and leads to a greater subscebtibility to progressive deafness, there is a good chance it will get worse and MoD will then attempt to use their favourite defence of time and the supposed 5 year rule; it is not however a robust defence in the case of progressive illness's if their origin was caused in service but RBL will guide you on this.
I'm not a lawyer by the way, but I will also be pursuing MoD for damaging my hearing by way of inadequate hearing protection if they turn down my claim and have spoken to RBL and my Union about this. RBL are very useful and have a lot of info already, my Union really wrapped the legal argument up, the guy said "they had a responsibility to reduce the risk of noise induced hearing loss to the lowest level possible, not just supply you with a pair of off the shelf ear protectors that seem to have repeatedly proved inadequate, coupled with the fact that you have failed your last 4 hearing tests they may have failed in their duty of care" (I have all of my hearing test records now and nobody ever told me I had failed a single test) He advised me to use RBL to the limit of their assistance, if I'm still not happy the Union will be willing to pursue it further if necessary (ie they will pay for a specialist lawyer) Don't expect to get rich though, payouts are typically in the region of £5 - £12k and tinitus is always considered sceptically.
Edited because I forgot to put in this snippet from Hansard in 2006:
Mike Penning: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many servicemen and women have received an award for noise-induced hearing loss since the introduction of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme. [89842]
Derek Twigg: There have been no awards made for noise-induced hearing loss under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme since it came into force.
The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme applies to injuries or illnesses caused on or after 6 April 2005. Hearing loss caused by chronic exposure to noise in service is increasingly an historical phenomenon: since the mid-1960s, precautions and equipment have been introduced to protect the hearing of Service personnel from noise relating to service, including that arising in combat.
DT_Xtremez_21: