Croke v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government & Anor

A statutory time limit for challenging a planning decision is strict and cannot be extended by judicial discretion. Where making the application requires the court office to function, an extension may arise when the final day falls on a weekend or bank holiday on which the office is closed. The same approach does not apply merely because a litigant is physically prevented from reaching an office that remains open. An accessibility-based test would create uncertainty for litigants and affected third parties, and has no reasonable statutory basis. Persons subject to strict time limits must make arrangements to attend the court office in good time.

The claimant sought permission under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to challenge an Inspector’s dismissal of his planning appeal. The six-week period expired on 23 March 2016. An agent attempted to file the claim shortly before the Administrative Court office closed but was refused entry by security staff. The claimant attended the following day, but the claim was not issued until 29 March, after the Easter closure.

The Secretary of State applied to strike out the claim as out of time. The issue was whether physical inability to access an otherwise open court office extended the statutory period.

1. Application dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The application under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 was made out of time, so the court had no jurisdiction to entertain it.
2. Making an application under section 288 requires proceedings to be issued by the Administrative Court. The relevant provisions of the Civil Procedure Rules and practice directions show that filing at the Administrative Court identifies where the claim must be started, while issuing the claim form starts the proceedings.
3. The statutory six-week period is absolute. The recognised extension where the final day falls on a weekend or bank holiday when the court office is closed does not extend to a case where the office is open but the litigant is prevented from reaching it.
4. The claimant’s proposed test, under which the due date would be extended whenever the court office was inaccessible, was rejected. It gave no sufficiently certain answer as to what constituted inaccessibility, how close the litigant had to be, or which causes of obstruction qualified. It would also create uncertainty for third parties affected by planning decisions.
5. There was no discretion under the 1990 Act or the Civil Procedure Rules to permit a late claim. Security procedures and the need to comply with security staff’s directions were matters that litigants had to anticipate. It was unnecessary to decide whether the claim form presented on 24 March had been wrongly rejected, since issuing it then would still have been out of time.

First-instance application under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Ouseley J had struck out the claim on the papers, with an oral renewal permitted. The present court upheld the jurisdictional objection and dismissed the application as out of time.