AC-2024-LON-001142 - [2025] EWHC 2015 (Admin)

The present claim includes a process rationality challenge. That requires inter alia that a decision-maker “must have regard to all mandatorily relevant considerations”; see R (Law Society) v Lord Chancellor [2018] EWHC 2094 (Admin), [2019] 1 WLR 1649 at paragraph [98]. A mandatory relevant consideration is one that is “so obviously material to a decision … that anything short of direct consideration of them” would be unlawful (although weight is a matter for the public authority); see R (Friends of the Earth) v Heathrow Airport Ltd [2020] UKSC 52 at paragraphs [117]-[121].

Further, the decision-maker cannot have “failed to grapple with the relevant evidence”; see R (Kerman) v Charity Commission [2025] EWHC 1223 (Admin) at paragraph [59].And the process of reasoning “should contain no logical error or critical gap”; KP at paragraph [56] (and see R (Wells) v Parole Board [2019] EWHC 2710 (Admin), where Saini J said the question for the court was whether the conclusion reached followed from the evidence, or “is there an unexplained evidential gap or leap in reasoning which fails to justify the conclusion?”).

In the context of a process irrationality challenge, applying a heightened standard of review means that the court will subject the decision to “more rigorous examination, to ensure that it is in no way flawed”; see Bugdaycay v Secretary of State for the Home Department [1987] AC 514, HL, per Lord Bridge at p 531. The court will look to see if the reasoning of the decision-maker demonstrates “that every factor which might tell in favour of [the claimant] has been properly taken into account”; R (YH (Iraq)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWCA Civ 116, [2010] 4 All ER 448, per Carnwath LJ at paragraph [24], and see KP at paragraph [77].