AC-2024-BHM-000217 - [2025] EWHC 2510 (Admin)

The Interested Party’s Detailed Grounds of Defence include, at [§§16-17]:

“The Claimant does not articulate the specific right or Article relied upon in support of the claimed breach of Human Rights. It is assumed, given the nature of the complaint advanced under this Ground, that the protected rights at issue are those under Article 6.

The Interested Party does not dispute that if the Defendant had refused to hear the Claimant on the question of costs at the hearing, that would constitute procedural unfairness: De Smith’s Judicial Review, 9^th Edn at 9-904. There is no need, therefore, for the Claimant to separately seek to rely on, or to assert a breach of, Article 6 ECHR in that respect.”

The Claimant’s skeleton argument goes no further on the legal basis for the Claim. Neither counsel made detailed submissions on the law of natural justice in the particular context which arises here, though Ms Lean drew attention to R (Paling) v Ipswich Magistrates Court [2021] EWHC 2739 (Admin) in which Mr David Pittaway QC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, heard a fairness case in which the grounds were as to: (1) the ability of the Claimant to hear what was said at a hearing, and; (2) the refusal to allow the Claimant to make oral submissions in addition to the 10-page synopsis he had handed into the justices.

Notice is central to natural justice: Kanda v Government of Malaya [1962] AC 322 at [337] for the well-known dictum of Lord Denning that if the right to be heard is to be a real right which is worth anything, it must carry with it a right in the accused man to know the case which is made against him. He must know what evidence has been given and what statements have been made affecting him: and then he must be given a fair opportunity to correct or contradict them. Further, I understand the learned Deputy Judge in Paling to have accepted [at 11] counsel’s submissions that the court must make its own independent judgment of fairness rather than apply a Wednesbury reasonableness approach: R (Mahfouz) v General Medical Second Defendant [2004] EWCA Civ 223 per Carnwath at para 19 and R v Panel on Takeovers and Mergers ex p Guinness plc [1991] QB 146 per Lloyd LJ at para 184. The question is, does the court perceive that there was a failure on the part of the decision-maker to discharge its judicial function with the result that the hearing was unfair?: Rose v Humbles [1972] 1 WLR 33, para 12.

Representation may be an important factor in securing natural justice at a hearing. In this case, both parties appeared by junior counsel before the Magistrates’ Court, as they were plainly entitled to do.