Blake & Ors v London Borough of Waltham Forest

The public sector equality duty requires a public authority to identify and assess the real and likely adverse equality impacts of a proposed decision before making it. Where a decision may deprive a vulnerable group of an important service, the authority must assess the impact on the realistic assumption that the service may cease, rather than on an optimistic assumption that mitigation will be accepted. The assessment must be evidence-based, undertaken with rigour and an open mind, and address appropriate mitigating measures. The court reviews the lawfulness of the process, not the weight given to competing considerations. A failure to assess a central and obvious impact vitiates the decision and will ordinarily justify quashing it.

The claimants challenged the Council’s decision of 17 April 2013 to terminate Christian Kitchen’s licence to operate a soup kitchen from a Council-owned car park. The soup kitchen had served homeless and vulnerable people for many years. The Council offered an alternative lay-by site, but Christian Kitchen considered it unsafe and inaccessible and maintained that relocation would result in closure.

Permission was granted only on the ground that the Council had failed to comply with the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010. The central issue was whether the Council’s equality analysis adequately assessed the likely impact of revocation on elderly, disabled and other vulnerable users, including the risk that the soup kitchen would close altogether.

1. The claim succeeded. The Council’s decision to revoke the licence was declared unlawful and quashed for failure to comply with the public sector equality duty.
2. Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, the decision-maker had to give due regard to the relevant equality objectives before and at the time of making the decision. The duty was substantive, required rigour and an open mind, and could require further enquiry where relevant material was unavailable.
3. The Council correctly identified soup-kitchen users as a potentially affected group, including elderly, disabled and otherwise vulnerable people, and recognised that the decision could have a disproportionately adverse effect on them. It was legally entitled to terminate the licence and was not obliged to provide an alternative site.
4. Nevertheless, the equality analysis assessed the lesser impact of relocation to the proposed lay-by. It did not confront the obvious and realistic prospect that Christian Kitchen would not relocate and that the soup kitchen would close altogether. The Council therefore failed to assess the most serious likely impact or to consider mitigation directed to that impact.
5. The contemporaneous documents did not establish that the decision-maker had engaged with the risk of closure. Later evidence that he had appreciated the risk could not cure the absence of contemporaneous consideration. The analysis also relied on an unsupported assumption that users could reach the alternative site by public transport, despite evidence concerning homelessness, poverty, mobility difficulties and safety concerns.
6. The court accepted that, once the duty had been properly performed, the weight given to countervailing considerations was for the Council, subject only to ordinary public law review. This case involved a failure at the basic process level, not impermissible judicial micromanagement.
7. Given the importance of informed decision-making where vulnerable people might suffer grave adverse effects, a declaration alone was insufficient. The decision was quashed for reconsideration.

The judgment was a first-instance judicial review decision. The judgment records that permission was renewed before Mr John Bowers QC, sitting as a Deputy, but no appellate decision is stated.