AC-2024-LON-003241 - [2025] EWHC 3014 (Admin)

The unsuccessful application for an adjournment on 26 March 2024 was the last the Coroner or the Interested Parties heard about a proposed judicial review application until the present application was served on them on 4 October 2024.

The evidence indicates that on 23 April 2024, Mrs Rizvi obtained advice from counsel who was not a member of the Inquest team, the precise terms of which are not known. Her evidence is that a conflict of interest on the part of the lawyer concerned became apparent at the beginning of May 2024. At that point, efforts to instruct lawyers appear to have ceased, for the time being, with Mrs Rizvi seeking to prepare a judicial review challenge herself.

On 17 June 2024, Mrs Rizvi emailed the Administrative Court Office (“ACO”) with a Claim Form N461, Statement of Facts and Grounds and Fee Remission Form. The Statement of Facts and Grounds advanced five grounds, none of them the two now advanced:

Mrs Rizvi’s email stated that various documents would be provided to the ACO within 4 to 5 weeks including the Ruling. No copy of the claim form was provided to the Coroner or any of the interested parties.

On 19 June 2024, the ACO sent Mrs Rizvi the Help With Fees application form. However, on the date, the ACO informed Mrs Rizvi that:

“We would not be able to process the [HWF] application as the applicant is in receipt of a legal aid certificate”

(a reference to the legal aid certificate granted to the Rizvi family for the Inquest).

Mrs Rizvi’s evidence is that, at this stage, she thought it was an issue relating to payment of the fee which was preventing her judicial review application being processed. However, on 24 June 2024 the ACO wrote stating that the court needed a copy of the decision she was seeking to challenge.

On 10 July 2024, Mrs Rizvi responded to the ACO letter regarding Help With Fees stating that the legal aid certificate granted for the Inquest did not extend to the judicial review application. She provided a copy of the Ruling at the same time, although this does not appear to have been appreciated at the ACO, who stated in an email of 16 July 2024 that the claim form could not be issued until it had been received.

At some point after 16 July 2024, Mrs Rizvi made contact with the chambers of her current counsel, Matthew Stanbury, to be told that counsel was away from 22 July to 19 August. No other counsel appears to have been approached, but a conference with Mr Stanbury was fixed for 20 August 2024. By the end of August 2024, Mrs Rizvi was in contact with her current solicitors, who had a meeting with Mrs Rizvi on 28 August 2024, and set about assembling the documents required for a legal aid application. Initially, the solicitors thought that Mrs Rizvi would not be eligible for legal aid, but further information was forthcoming. On 5 September 2024, the solicitors accepted instructions and the following day a legal aid application was submitted (with emergency legal aid being granted on 20 September 2024).

A draft statement of facts and grounds was circulated on 19 September 2024, and approved on 23 September. The documents were sent to the Administrative Court on 24 September.