Eastenders Cash And Carry Plc v South Western Magistrates' Court

For a statutory search-warrant power based on reasonable grounds for suspicion, the evidential threshold is lower than where the statute requires reasonable grounds for belief. The court must apply a two-stage test. It must first ask whether the justice was subjectively satisfied that reasonable grounds for suspicion existed. It must then ask whether the material before the justice objectively entitled that conclusion. Limited intelligence may suffice where, viewed in context, it provides reasonable grounds for suspicion. The possibility that further questions might have produced more information does not itself invalidate the warrant. A challenge to a decision that has already been corrected in the claimant’s favour may be rejected as wholly academic.

The claimant sought judicial review of two decisions by the defendant magistrates’ court. The first was the grant of a warrant authorising police to search the claimant’s commercial premises for firearms under section 46 of the Firearms Act 1968. The second concerned the court’s initial refusal to disclose the information supporting the warrant.

The information referred to intelligence from an unregistered source, corroborated by other officers. No firearms were found when the warrant was executed. The supporting information was later disclosed after the magistrates’ court conducted a public-interest-immunity assessment. The central issues were whether the disclosure challenge remained live and whether the material justified the warrant.

1. Disclosure challenge. The challenge to the initial refusal to disclose the information was wholly academic. The magistrates’ court had subsequently disclosed the information and had adopted the correct starting point: the claimant was entitled to see the information unless the public interest required withholding some or all of it.
2. Statutory threshold. Section 46(1) of the Firearms Act 1968 required reasonable grounds for suspecting, not reasonable grounds for believing, that a relevant offence had been or was being committed, or that there was a danger to public safety or the peace. Belief involves a higher evidential threshold than suspicion. The distinction was supported by Bright v Central Criminal Court [2001] 1 WLR 662 and Windsor and others v CPS [2011] EWCA Crim 143.
3. Two-stage assessment. The test was both subjective and objective. The district judge had to be satisfied that reasonable grounds for suspicion existed, and there had to be material before her on which she was entitled to reach that conclusion.
4. Application. The information was limited but stated that security guards at the premises were armed with firearms. The district judge had queried the source and whether the information derived from intelligence and observation. She was entitled to rely on the account that the information had been corroborated and to form her own view. The absence of further detail did not invalidate the warrant because the threshold for reasonable suspicion was relatively low.
5. The application for judicial review was dismissed.