CHD No.2, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Defence

In judicial review of a relocation refusal under an internally adopted policy, a decision-maker may use lawful guidance as the operative means of determining whether an applicant is at equivalent risk. Where the policy requires the guidance to be applied, the decision-maker need not separately repeat the policy’s general question after the applicant fails the guidance-based criterion. Equivalent risk concerns similarity between the threat arising from the applicant’s role and the threat to persons in specified high-profile roles; it does not require equivalence between the roles themselves. An applicant’s or employer’s opposition by an adversary does not establish that the applicant personally took action to prevent that adversary’s activity. Anxious scrutiny requires close analysis of the reasons, but a rational policy may protect direct actors rather than general civil-society participants.

The claimant sought judicial review of the Secretary of State for Defence’s refusal to relocate him under the Afghanistan Response Route policy, adopted after a data leak. The judgment relied on an earlier open judgment in the same proceedings for the basic factual background: [2026] EWHC 566 (Admin). The claimant satisfied Conditions A, C and D, but failed Condition B(iii), concerning a role carrying equivalent risk to roles listed in Addenda A or B. The refusal relied on the absence of direct action to prevent Taliban activity. The challenge alleged misdirection, failure to recognise relevant evidence and irrationality. The central issue was whether the decision-maker lawfully applied the policy and its Guidance and reached a rational conclusion on equivalent risk.

Disposition. The court dismissed all four grounds of challenge.

1. The court accepted that the policy was intended to apply strictly to a carefully targeted high-risk cohort and that the decision had been made internally, briefly and without communication of reasons. Those features did not relieve the Defendant of the obligation to act lawfully in accordance with the policy it had promulgated. The court conducted close scrutiny of the reasons, applying the anxious-scrutiny approach supported by CXI and others v Secretary of State for Defence [2024] EWHC 891 (Admin) at [53].
2. There was no misdirection. The ARR Policy required the decision-maker to apply its Guidance when determining whether the Conditions were met. The Guidance’s criterion concerning whether the individual had taken action to prevent Taliban activity could therefore operate as a determinant of equivalent risk. Once that lawful criterion was not met, the decision-maker was not required to return separately to the policy’s broad equivalent-risk question; doing so would render the Guidance meaningless.
3. The fact that the employer was regarded as a direct enemy of the Taliban, and that the claimant had experienced adverse activity from the Taliban, did not establish that the claimant himself had undertaken positive action to prevent Taliban activity. Treating the absence of such personal action as material was neither illogical nor irrational.
4. Equivalent risk required comparison between the threat arising from the claimant’s role and the threat to a person holding an Addendum A or B role. It did not require the roles themselves to be equivalent.
5. The Defendant was rationally entitled to conclude that the claimant’s work as a Logistics Manager, including important public-facing tasks in an organisation promoting the rule of law, did not meet the threshold. The policy could rationally protect persons involved in direct action to prevent Taliban activity rather than persons promoting general civil-society objectives.

This was a first-instance decision. The judgment records an earlier open judgment in the same proceedings, [2026] EWHC 566 (Admin) , as the source of the basic factual background. No appellate decision is stated.