Government responds to the autumn 2013 consultation on potential measures for the further reform of judicial review
The government has today published its response to its consultation on reform to judicial review.
The 24-page government response can be found here.
The consultation exercise ran from 6 September 2013 to 1 November 2013.
The government announced today that 325 responses were received to the consultation from a range of stakeholders, including lawyers, representative bodies, businesses, public authorities and interested individuals. A summary of the responses can be found here.
The government response summarises the responses received and sets out the reforms it intends to take forward and those proposals it has decided not to pursue.
The government says that under the reforms it is taking forward, it will:
• create a Planning Court to speed up the consideration of planning and related judicial reviews and statutory challenges;
• make changes to how the courts deal with judicial reviews which are unlikely to affect the outcome for the applicant by amending the current test of 'inevitable' to ensure judicial reviews cannot proceed on the basis of minor 'technicalities';
• reduce the potential for delay to key projects and policies by increasing the scope of leapfrogging appeals (where a case can move directly from the Court of first instance to the Supreme Court);
• strengthen the implications of receiving a Wasted Costs Order by placing a duty on the courts to consider notifying the relevant regulator and/or the Legal Aid Agency when one is made;
• set out the circumstances in which a court can make a protective cost order in non environmental judicial reviews to ensure they are only used in exceptional cases properly in the public interest;
• establish a presumption that interveners in a judicial review will have to pay their own costs and any costs that they have caused to either party because of their intervention;
• introduce new requirements for all applicants for judicial review to provide information about how the judicial review is funded in the courts and Upper Tribunal and how the courts should use this information.
• restrict payment of legal aid for work on permission applications unless permission is granted subject to discretionary payment by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA).
The government says the changes aim to ensure that cases are dealt with more quickly – particularly significant planning cases - and to tackle the burden of judicial review by those seeking to generate publicity or delay implementation of decisions that had been properly and lawfully taken.