Nathaniel Adams v The Parole Board for England and Wales

A common law duty requires the Parole Board to complete a parole review within a reasonable time. The assessment is fact-sensitive, and a more stringent standard applies where liberty is involved. Operational pressures, including insufficient capacity or members, do not justify unreasonable delay.

When deciding an application to expedite or prioritise a hearing, the Board must consider relevant matters such as the length of delay and must give adequate reasons. The volume of competing applications is irrelevant in itself. A failure to address those matters, or reliance on that irrelevant consideration, renders the decision unlawful.

The claimant, serving a determinate sentence, was recalled to custody after allegations of domestic violence. Although the police later took no further action and a Parole Board member directed that his case was ready to list, no oral hearing was listed for a substantial period. An administrative error further delayed listing.

The claimant sought judicial review of the delay and of a later decision refusing expedition or prioritisation. Permission was granted on grounds challenging the Parole Board. The central issues were whether the Board had breached its common law duty to act within a reasonable time and whether the refusal of expedition was legally rational, properly reasoned and based on relevant considerations.

1. Claim succeeded. The court declared that the Parole Board had unlawfully delayed the claimant’s parole review and that its decision of 9 June 2022 refusing expedition or prioritisation was unlawful.
2. The Parole Board has a common law duty to conduct a parole review within a reasonable time. The question is fact-sensitive, but the standard is more stringent where the claimant’s liberty is at stake. Not every departure from ideal administrative standards is unlawful, but the delay here was unreasonable. The claimant had been recalled for about 15 months, although the case had been found ready to list more than a year earlier and was realistically ready for hearing in January 2022.
3. Administrative error explained, but did not justify, part of the delay. A lack of capacity caused by increased case numbers or an insufficient number of members was not a lawful excuse. The common law provided protection equivalent, in this respect, to the protection under article 5.4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as illustrated by Noorkoiv.
4. The listing of hearings is a judicial function. In deciding whether to expedite or prioritise a case, the Board had to consider the circumstances of the particular case. The volume of applications for expedition said nothing, by itself, about the merits of the claimant’s application and was an irrelevant consideration.
5. The application identified the prospect of more than a year passing before an initial hearing and the fact that later cases appeared to have been listed first. The length of delay was expressly recognised in the Board’s prioritisation framework as capable of supporting prioritisation in recall cases. Those matters required consideration and adequate reasons. The failure to address them, and the reliance on the volume of applications, made the 9 June decision unlawful.
6. The court declined to impose the requested timetable for release, an early Parole Board decision or action by the Secretary of State. That relief was not properly pleaded and, in any event, the Secretary of State was not a defendant to the grounds on which permission had been granted. The court granted liberty to apply and expected the Parole Board’s existing directions to be complied with.

This was a first-instance judicial review decision. Permission was granted by Lavender J and renewed by Farbey J on the papers, but the judgment records no prior merits decision.