Clare, R (on the application of) v Commissioner of Police

A decision to dispense with the statutory investigation of a police complaint is unlawful where the decision-maker fails to consider material correspondence showing that the complainant’s solicitors were actively assisting and should have received relevant communications. The court must distinguish the existence of an unlawful decision from the discretionary question whether relief should be refused for delay. Relief should not ordinarily be refused where the delay did not cause the prejudice relied upon and there is an important public interest in complaints being resolved on their merits. The court must not usurp the functions assigned to the investigating authority. After quashing a dispensation decision, it should not direct reconsideration where the statutory application must first be made by the appropriate authority on the basis of current circumstances.

The claimant complained of excessive force during her arrest. The complaint was referred to and supervised by the Police Complaints Authority. After correspondence with the claimant’s solicitors, the Authority granted a dispensation under the Police (Dispensation from Requirement to Investigate Complaints) Regulations 1985.

The claimant sought judicial review and an extension of time. The Independent Police Complaints Commission accepted that the decision should be quashed, but PC Davies contested the claim, relying on the claimant’s delay, the officer’s hardship and the possibility that dispensation was the only reasonable outcome. The central issues were whether the decision was vitiated by failure to consider a material matter, whether relief should be refused for delay, and whether the court should require reconsideration.

1. The dispensation decision was quashed. The Authority had failed to take account of the material fact that the claimant’s solicitors had undertaken to prepare a statement and that correspondence should be sent to them. The letter sent directly to the claimant did not cure that failure. In the circumstances, the requirements of paragraph 4 of the Schedule to the Regulations were not shown to be satisfied.
2. The structure of the dispensation provisions required separate consideration of whether there had been a refusal or failure to assist, whether that made completion of a satisfactory investigation impracticable within a reasonable period, and whether dispensation was appropriate in all the circumstances. The approach in R v Police Complaints Authority ex parte Broome was treated as a helpful analysis of that structure.
3. Although the claim was not brought as promptly as it should have been, relief was not refused. Had proceedings been brought earlier, the adverse consequences relied upon by PC Davies would still have occurred. The delay was therefore not causative of that prejudice. The important public interest lay in resolving complaints against police officers on their merits rather than by technicality.
4. The court gave full weight to the hardship caused to the officer but could not conclude that dispensation was the only reasonable course. The statutory functions belonged first to the Commissioner and then to the Authority, now the defendant. The court would not usurp those functions or require reconsideration of the application.
5. The decision of 26 March 2004 was quashed. The requested orders concerning the defendant’s later decisions and a mandatory reconsideration were refused as unnecessary or inappropriate. Costs were ordered against the defendant up to 14 October 2004 and against PC Davies from 2 March 2005 onwards, with detailed assessment of the claimant’s publicly funded costs.

First-instance judicial review proceedings. The judgment records that an earlier consent order quashing the dispensation decision was set aside by Munby J on 1 March 2005, after which the claim proceeded to a full hearing.