Judicial review—overview

Interested parties In the context of judicial review, an interested party refers to any person—other than the claimant and defendant—who is directly affected by the claim. Where a judicial review claim is connected to proceedings in a court or a tribunal, every other party to those proceedings will qualify as an interested party in the review; eg if a defendant in a criminal case in the Magistrates or Crown Court brings a judicial review of a decision in that case, the prosecution must always be named as an interested party in the judicial review claim. A person is regarded as directly affected if they are affected without the intervention of any intermediate agency, that is, without the involvement of any intervening body. For example, in R v Rent Officer Service, ex parte Muldoon, a local housing authority’s decision not to pay a housing benefit was challenged. The Secretary of State was indirectly affected, because if the decision were quashed, the disputed benefit would be added to the subsidy paid to the local authority...

Procedural impropriety as a ground of judicial review ‘Procedural impropriety’ is the third and final ground of judicial review set out by Lord Diplock in the landmark Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service (GCHQ). In that decision, Lord Diplock described this ground as covering a failure to observe the basic norms of natural justice, or to act with procedural fairness towards the person affected by a decision, as well as a failure by an administrative tribunal to comply with procedural rules expressly prescribed in the legislative instrument conferring its jurisdiction, even where no denial of natural justice is involved. This Practice Note considers the principal features of procedural impropriety as a ground of judicial review: The evolution of procedural impropriety as a basis for judicial review, which includes: the terminology of procedural propriety the limits of procedural impropriety as a ground of review the justification for procedural propriety Components of procedural propriety: obligation to comply with statutory procedure; the ‘common law’ of procedural fairness grounded in the demands of natural justice, including the duty to honour procedural legitimate expectation, duty to ...

When weighing up whether, and in what way, to pursue a claim for judicial review, your opening task is to assess if that procedure is the suitable mechanism for resolving the issues presented by the matter before you. For additional help, see Practice Note: Judicial review—what it is and when it can be used. Time limits If judicial review is the route chosen, the next step will typically be to confirm there is still time to commence proceedings. Under CPR 54.5, claims for judicial review (apart from the three exceptions referred to below) must be issued promptly and, in any event, within three months of the date on which the grounds first arose. Promptness is an overriding requirement, and you should not assume a claim is in time merely because it is brought within three months. Accordingly, once the basis for the challenge has emerged, speed is essential. In R (Jones) v Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, the court underlined that the three-month limit is a backstop, and applicants must act with the utmost promptitude...

Overview of the illegality ground Illegality stands as the first ground of judicial review identified by Lord Diplock in his well-known analysis in Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service. He described three categories for controlling administrative action by judicial review, the initial category being “illegality”, by which he meant that a decision-maker must correctly apprehend the law governing the scope of his power and act in conformity with it. A challenge on the illegality ground alleges that a public law decision-maker has acted unlawfully by exceeding its powers, or by misunderstanding them, or by otherwise misusing them. Lord Diplock’s term ‘illegality’ is helpful as a label for this ground because such a claim essentially maintains that a decision is unlawful for want of a proper legal foundation, or because its legal basis is inadequate or defective, or is in some other way legally erroneous. This is to be contrasted with claims that: a decision departs from rationality or reasonableness in a way only indirectly linked to its merits (ie claims within the unreasonableness or irrationality ground) ...