Redknapp & Anor v City of London Police & Ors

A search warrant under Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 is not a formality. The application must identify the statutory condition relied upon, and the issuing justice must have sufficient recorded material to justify the warrant. A warrant may combine specific-premises and all-premises descriptions if the statutory requirements are met. On execution, an occupier must receive the warrant, including its schedule, identifying the premises searched. Judicial review of arrest, detention and bail decisions may be available, but the court will not determine issues requiring substantial factual investigation on inadequate application material.

The claimants challenged the issue and execution of a search warrant obtained under sections 8 and 16 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. They also challenged decisions to arrest, detain, bail and extend the first claimant’s bail during a police investigation into suspected football-transfer offences.

The warrant application failed to identify which condition in section 8(3) was relied upon. During execution, the second claimant received a copy that did not include the schedule identifying her address. The central issues were whether the warrant was lawfully issued and executed, and whether the remaining police decisions could be challenged on the material before the court.

1. Warrant unlawfully issued. The application form identified none of the alternatives in section 8(3) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The court would not infer from surrounding evidence that the magistrate had been told facts capable of satisfying one of those conditions. The statutory preconditions had therefore not been met. The warrant was unlawful and was quashed.
2. The court criticised the slipshod completion of the application. A search warrant authorises an invasion of the home, so the material justifying it should appear in the application or in a proper record of information given orally. The material sought could properly be described broadly where the description excluded legally privileged, excluded and special-procedure material.
3. A single warrant could contain both specific-premises and all-premises elements. Nothing in the Act indicated that Parliament intended such a warrant to be unlawful. The inclusion of a Scottish address did not invalidate the warrant relating to the claimants’ premises where a separate Scottish warrant had properly been granted.
4. Execution invalid. Under section 16(5), the second claimant was entitled to see and receive a copy of the warrant, including its schedule, identifying her address. The police could redact other addresses or obtain separate warrants, but could not omit the searched address.
5. The complaints about press collusion, the search hour, the extent of the search, and the first claimant’s arrest, detention and bail required substantial factual inquiry. On the material before the court, no order could properly be made on those matters. Permission was refused on the arrest, detention and bail grounds, and leave was not granted to challenge the bail extension.
6. Underhill J added that his earlier observation in R (on the application of “C”) v The Chief Constable of “A” Police and another that even a warrant obtained by misleading the justice in bad faith would remain valid was obiter and wrong. Non-disclosure of material facts known to the police may invalidate a warrant.

This was a first-instance judicial review claim in the Divisional Court of the High Court. The judgment does not state any prior appellate decision.