Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, R (on the application of) v Grace (Valuation Officer) & Anor

Judicial review is a remedy of last resort. A claimant must challenge the impugned grounds within the prescribed period, calculated from when those grounds arose. Lack of knowledge may be relevant to an extension of time, but does not itself postpone the commencement of time. An extension requires a good reason, particularly where a public body would face a stale claim.

Permission may also be refused where Parliament has provided an adequate statutory procedure for correcting the relevant error. The court will not ordinarily permit a claimant to bypass that procedure. Permission may further be refused where the claim is academic and no sufficient public interest justifies determining a dispute arising from facts that no longer create a practical risk.

The claimant local authority sought judicial review concerning errors made by the Valuation Officer when merging two hereditaments in the 2005 Non-Domestic Rating List. The errors created an incorrect retrospective rates gap. The claimant initially challenged the refusal to amend the list in April 2012, but accepted that the statutory powers no longer permitted such an amendment.

The claimant therefore amended its case to challenge the original errors made in August and September 2009. The interested party withdrew its proposed claim for repayment of rates. The court treated the matter as a rolled-up hearing and considered whether permission should be granted, including the delay, the statutory correction scheme, the practical effect of the proposed relief and whether the claim remained academic.

1. Permission refused. The amended claim concerned decisions made in August and September 2009 and was manifestly out of time. The relevant date in judicial review is when the grounds arose, rather than when the claimant acquired knowledge of them. Knowledge may bear on whether there is good reason to extend time under Part 53 rule 4, but the claimant had not shown such a reason.
2. The claimant should have identified the errors from the schedules sent by the Valuation Officer in September 2009. The public interest in protecting public bodies from stale claims, the claimant’s failure to examine information supplied to it, and the interested party’s withdrawal of its proposed refund claim all weighed against an extension of time.
3. Had the claim been in time, permission would nevertheless have been refused because the Non-Domestic Rating (Alteration of Lists and Appeals)(England) Regulations 2005 and the corresponding 2009 Regulations provided a statutory scheme, with strict time limits, for correcting errors in rating lists. Judicial review could not be used to circumvent that statutory remedy.
4. The court also considered, obiter, that the proposed relief was problematic. Quashing the later errors alone would leave the earlier incorrect merger in place; quashing both could remove the merger altogether. The court was doubtful that it could direct a correct retrospective entry outside the statutory scheme.
5. The claim was also academic. The interested party had withdrawn its proposed refund claim and there was no appreciable remaining risk to the claimant. A general assertion that similar problems might affect other billing authorities did not establish a sufficient public interest in allowing this particular claim to proceed.

The judgment records that permission had initially been granted on the papers on 23 August 2012. At the rolled-up hearing, the court considered the amended claim and refused permission.