AC-2024-LON-0001595 - [2025] EWHC 2182 (Admin)

The first issue under this ground is whether it has been properly pleaded. Paragraph [87] of the Re-Amended Statement of Facts and Grounds (“RASFG”) provides that “The Secretary of State failed in his Tameside duty to investigate adequately or at all whether Rydon is a fit person to carry out or procure the remediation works to the Buildings”. The Detailed Grounds of Defence (“DGD”) complain that this amounts to a bare assertion without adequate particularisation as to what Rydon says the duty requires in this context. The Claimant’s Reply did not elaborate, but the Claimant’s Skeleton Argument does so by explaining that the SoS ought to have asked Rydon to provide documentary evidence as to lessons learned as suggested by officials in Annex C to the First Submission.

The question is whether the pleaded Tameside ground is deficient and if it is, whether the Claimant is entitled to make good that deficiency through its Skeleton Argument.

Mr Litton submits that the Tameside ground was always part of the pleaded case and that the Skeleton Argument has merely provided further elaboration. Sir James submits that that will not do and cites the cases of R (Talpada) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 841 at [67] to [69] (cited in Keep Bourne End Green v Buckinghamshire District Council [2020] EWHC 1984 (Admin) at [38]) in which Singh LJ emphasised the need for “procedural rigour” in public law litigation and deprecated the practice of grounds of challenge “… “evolving” during the course of proceedings, for example when a final skeleton argument comes to be drafted”; and R (AB) v Chief Constable of Hampshire Constabulary & Ors [2019] EWHC 3461 (Admin) at [113] (skeleton argument not to be used as a means of amending grounds relied upon).

In my judgment, whilst Ground 2 (originally Ground 1D) of the RASFG is somewhat lacking in detail, it contains sufficient information for the Defendant to understand the case against it. The Defendant would understand from the brief pleaded passage that there was an alleged failure to investigate the question of Rydon’s fitness to undertake the remediation works. The precise manner in which that failure arose is not specified, but the RASFG taken as a whole does set out at least part of the factual basis for the allegation in that there is reference to officials highlighting the fact that Rydon may be able to produce documentary evidence to demonstrate that it has changed: see RASFG at [37]. I bear in mind that the claim more generally has been pleaded in considerable detail across almost 40 pages; this is not therefore a case where a Claimant has given the barest possible detail of its case only to start elaborating on the claims at the stage of skeleton arguments.

I proceed therefore on the basis that the issue has, in the context of this otherwise very detailed claim, been adequately (albeit not fully) pleaded.

I turn then to the substance of Ground 2.