The City and County of Swansea v Swansea Crown Court & Anor

A supervision order under the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964 cannot be made unless the proposed supervising officer consents and arrangements have been made for the specified treatment. These are jurisdictional prerequisites, not matters that can be inferred without evidence. Where the Crown Court makes such an order without satisfying those requirements, the Administrative Court may intervene by judicial review. The statutory restriction on review of matters relating to trial on indictment does not exclude review of an order made without jurisdiction. The appropriate remedy is to quash the unlawful order and remit the matter for redetermination.

B, an elderly defendant suffering from dementia, was found under section 4A of the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964 to have committed historical sexual offences, after being found unfit to plead. The Crown Court made a two-year supervision order under section 5 of the Act, naming a local-authority social worker as supervising officer and specifying treatment conditions.

The social worker had neither consented to undertake the supervision nor been shown by evidence to be willing. The local authority applied to the Crown Court for review, but the application was refused. It sought judicial review of the imposition of the order. The central issues were whether the statutory prerequisites for a supervision order had been met and whether the Administrative Court had jurisdiction to quash the order.

1. Judicial review allowed. The supervision order made on 28 September 2015 was quashed and the matter was remitted to the Crown Court for redetermination.
2. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 1A to the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964 makes the proposed supervising officer’s willingness a mandatory condition of a supervision order. Arrangements for the specified treatment are also mandatory. Without the supervising officer’s consent, the Crown Court has no jurisdiction to make the order.
3. On the evidence, the proposed supervising officer had not consented. There was no evidential foundation for the Recorder properly to find that she was willing. The standard-form recital in the order could not cure that absence.
4. The Administrative Court retains supervisory jurisdiction where the Crown Court acts without jurisdiction. Section 29(3) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 does not exclude review in such circumstances because an order made without jurisdiction is not a matter relating to trial on indictment. The court applied R v Crown Court at Maidstone ex parte London Borough of Harrow [2000] 1 Cr App R 117.
5. The order was unlawful, particularly because the proposed officer was unwilling and considered herself inadequately qualified for the contemplated long-term supervision. The redetermination was to proceed on the basis of the jury’s findings, available risk assessments and the restricted orders available under section 5 of the 1964 Act.

The judgment describes a prior application to the Swansea Crown Court for review of the supervision order. That application was refused on 19 November 2015. The local authority then obtained permission to seek judicial review and succeeded in the High Court.