A specialist planning court should be established to speed up development projects and drive out “meritless” objections, the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, has proposed.
In a revised consultation on reforming judicial review cases, the Ministry of Justice also calls for tougher restrictions to prevent charities and campaign groups from launching challenges unless they are directly involved in issues.
Those who make unsuccessful claims should in future face higher costs, it is suggested, while appeal cases deemed by the government to be important may be allowed to leapfrog the court of appeal and go straight to the supreme court.
Grayling said: “These proposals will ensure legal challenges are heard swiftly, so crucial new building projects no longer fall by the wayside because of needless delays.
“We want to make sure judicial review continues its crucial role in holding authorities and others to account, but also that it is used for the right reasons and is not abused by people to cause vexatious delays or to generate publicity for themselves at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.”
Lawyers and civil rights groups fear that restrictions on judicial review challenges will enable ministers and government to evade close scrutiny of their decisions and avoid accountability for their actions.
The reforms have been linked by Grayling to the UK’s economic recovery, although the expansion of judicial review cases in recent years has involved immigration cases.
The MoJ maintains that overall judicial review cases have more than doubled in number from 4,500 in 1998 to 12,400 in 2012, while last year just one in six were granted permission to proceed beyond the first consideration of the application.
In planning cases, the average time to resolve an application which went all the way to a final hearing was said in 2011 to be 370 days. A lands and planning chamber, staffed by specialist judges, would, the consultation said, “ensure that cases proceed quickly to a determination”.
The most contentious element is restrictions on so-called “standing” – the need for a claimant to be somehow involved in any case.
“Fifty judicial reviews per year have been identified that appear to have been lodged by NGOs, charities, pressure groups and faith organisations, ie by claimants who may not have had a direct interest in the matter at hand,” the consultation states.
“The government is concerned that the wide approach to standing has tipped the balance too far, allowing judicial review to be used to seek publicity or otherwise to hinder the process of proper decision-making.
“Judicial review should not be used to undermine this role by putting cases before the courts from individuals with no direct interest in the outcome … That would exclude persons who had only a political or theoretical interest, such as campaigning groups.”
Critics warn that narrowing the definition of standing would effectively deny all taxpayers the right to raise objections to the way in which their taxes are spent.
The consultation also suggests that judicial review challenges should no longer be brought under the public sector equality duty, a measure under the Equality Act 2010 that has generated many successful claims – including reversing the Bank of England’s decision not to put a woman on its banknotes.
Martin Goodall, a solicitor at Keystone Law who specialises in planning judicial reviews, said: “This latest outburst from Grayling is complete nonsense. Planning and infrastructure-related cases account for less than 2% of all judicial review applications – fewer than 200 a year, out of thousands.
“Local authorities have every right to defend their citizens against unlawful actions by government, just as individuals and groups have that right.”
Maura McGowan QC, chairman of the Bar Council, said barristers would examine the document “carefully in the context of the considerable public interest, and concern, which the MoJ’s earlier proposals aroused having regard to the importance of this remedy in challenging the decision-making processes of public authorities”.