Iqbal v Wandsworth County Council

Judicial review of a county court decision is available only within narrow limits. The Administrative Court may intervene where the county court has acted without jurisdiction, fundamentally departed from the correct procedure, or acted in complete disregard of its duties. A party has no automatic right to an oral hearing of a renewed permission application. The application must first be made within the time required by the applicable rules, after which any hearing depends on the court’s discretion. Case-management decisions will not be quashed merely because the claimant disagrees with them or alleges procedural unfairness. The claimant must establish a jurisdictional error, a fundamental procedural departure, or a complete disregard of duty.

The claimant sought judicial review of decisions made by HH Judge Knowles in proceedings concerning costs orders and an attempted substitution for the original party. The immediate challenge concerned the judge’s treatment of the claimant’s alleged renewed application for an oral hearing of permission to appeal against an order made by DJ Guinan on 1 April 2011.

The claimant argued that he had been denied an oral hearing and that the county court proceedings involved jurisdictional and procedural defects. The court considered the limited circumstances in which the Administrative Court may review county court decisions, and whether the impugned decision involved jurisdictional error, a fundamental departure from correct procedure, or a complete disregard of judicial duty.

1. The claim was dismissed. The claimant failed to establish any ground permitting judicial review of the county court decision.
2. Following Sivasubramaniam v Wandsworth County Court & Others [2002] EWCA Civ 1738, judicial review may be available in very limited circumstances: where the county court judge acted without jurisdiction, fundamentally departed from the correct procedure, or acted in complete disregard of his or her duties. The court assumed, without deciding, that this framework could apply to circuit judges’ decisions other than refusals of permission to appeal.
3. HH Judge Knowles had jurisdiction to consider whether the claimant’s renewed permission application was out of time. The CPR’s case-management powers supplied jurisdiction to make an order of that kind.
4. The judge had not acted in complete disregard of her duties. The timing of the alleged renewal application was relevant to the later decision on permission to appeal, and the evidence did not establish any dereliction of duty.
5. There had been no fundamental departure from correct procedure. The claimant had failed to pursue substitution in good time, had not been substituted as a party, and had not established that a timely renewal application had been received. Posting the earlier order to the solicitors still on the court record was not a fundamental procedural error.
6. An oral hearing was not an unconditional right. It depended on an application being made within the applicable seven-day period. There was no evidence that the judge exercised her resulting discretion wrongly, still less that she fundamentally departed from correct procedure.
7. The court added that, even if a procedural departure had been established, a quashing order would have had little practical effect because the claimant had not obtained substitution and therefore lacked standing to enforce the costs claim.

First-instance judicial review proceedings. The judgment does not state any subsequent appellate decision.