Regina (Muldoon) v Independent Police Complaints Commission: Admn 2009

Parker J outlined the court’s powers as regards decisions of the Independent Police Complaints Commission: ‘The IPCC is an independent statutory appeal body to whom Parliament has entrusted the function of reviewing the findings of investigations into police complaints if that is what an appellant requests. The IPCC’s decisions are likely to involve matters of judgment. For these reasons this court will allow the IPCC a discretionary area of judgment and will not intervene unless satisfied that the IPCC has gone beyond that permissible area to reach a conclusion not fairly and reasonably open to it . . It has also been said that the court should not expect or look in the appeal decision for the sort of tightly argued judgment that might be expected of a Chancery judge. On the contrary, what is important and necessary is that the conclusion should be clear and the reasons for those conclusions can be readily understood by the complainant, the police officers concerned and the relevant police authority, who may need to review their procedures in the light of the decision.’

Judges:

Parker J

Citations:

[2009] EWHC 3633

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Cited by:

CitedCubells, Regina (on The Application of) v Independent Police Complaints Commission CA 15-Oct-2012
The claimant’s mother had died in hospital. The claimant said that she had died as a result of failures by doctors, and had asked the coroner and police to investigate his allegation that she had been deliberately harmed to cover up missed . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Police

Updated: 08 May 2022; Ref: scu.464902