The court considered the need for speedy action in challenging planning decisions, and the need not to wait for the last available day. A review request should be directed at the decision properly under challenge. Laws J held: ‘In Gooding and Adams there were concrete decisions, not just a ‘continuing practice’, which were undoubtedly susceptible to the judicial review jurisdiction and which on the face of their pleadings the applicants sought to assault. Yet in each case the court held there was delay arising out of the applicants’ failure to challenge an earlier executive act or acts. These authorities do not enter into any analysis of the proper construction of Order 53, r.4(1), but as it seems to me they lend implicit support to the approach urged by the respondents, and I would construe the rule accordingly. In my judgment, however, even if Order 53, r.4(1) is to be interpreted more conservatively, so that ‘the date when grounds . . first arise’ is never earlier than the date when the impugned decision is taken, Eurotunnel, Gooding and Adams exemplify a common principle, whose nature is not dependent upon an appeal to the rules relating to delay. It is that a judicial review applicant must move against the substantive act or decision which is the real basis of his complaint. If, after that act has been done, he takes no steps but merely waits until something consequential and dependent upon it takes place and then challenges that, he runs the risk of being put out of court for being too late.[Counsel for the applicant] did not seek to deny that there exists a discretion to refuse leave, or relief, in such a case whether or not it falls within the terms of Order 53, r.4(1) or section 31(6). This is an inevitable function of the fact that the judicial review court, being primarily concerned with the maintenance of the rule of law by the imposition of objective legal standards upon the conduct of public bodies, has to adapt a flexible but principled approach to its own jurisdiction. Its decisions will constrain the actions of elected government, sometimes bringing potential uncertainty and added cost to good administration. And from time to time its judgments may impose heavy burdens on third parties. This is a price which often has to be paid for the rule of law to be vindicated. But because of these deep consequences which touch the public interest, the court in its discretion – whether so directed by rules of court or not – will impose a strict discipline in proceedings before it. It is marked by an insistence that applicants identify the real substance of their complaint and then act promptly, so as to ensure that the proper business of government and the reasonable interests of third parties are not overborne or unjustly prejudiced by litigation brought in circumstances where the point in question could have been exposed and adjudicated without unacceptable damage. The rule of law is not threatened, but strengthened, by such a discipline. It invokes public confidence and engages the law in the practical world. And it is administered, of course, case by case’.
Judges:
Laws J
Citations:
[1998] Env LR 415
Cited by:
Cited – Cala Homes (South) Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Another Admn 7-Feb-2011
The claimant sought judicial review of a statement and letter by the respondent making a material consideration for planning authorities the intended revocation by the Respondent of Regional Spatial Strategies. The effect would be to allow the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Administrative, Judicial Review
Updated: 02 May 2022; Ref: scu.428515
