Karen Lawrence, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Croydon

A traffic authority must exercise powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 for the statutory purposes identified by the Act. Raising revenue is not an authorised purpose. Revenue generation does not itself invalidate a traffic scheme, but the scheme is unlawful where raising revenue was the decision-maker’s dominant purpose. The court may infer that an authority adopted the lawful reasons in an officer’s report, but that inference is rebuttable by contrary evidence. A defendant that invokes the jurisdiction procedure in Part 11 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 must bring forward its whole jurisdiction challenge at that time. After an unsuccessful challenge, it cannot raise a second jurisdictional ground later in the proceedings.

The claimant challenged six permanent Low Traffic Neighbourhood traffic orders made by the defendant under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. She alleged that the orders had been made principally to preserve enforcement revenue, rather than for the statutory traffic-management purposes, and that the defendant had breached a legitimate expectation concerning review of the schemes.

Before the merits were considered, the court addressed whether the claim was a Planning Court claim, whether the sealed claim form had been served in time, whether time should be extended, whether the court could reopen an earlier decision, and whether the defendant could rely on late service after an earlier jurisdiction challenge had failed.

1. Procedural classification and service. The claim was a Planning Court claim under CPR r.54.21 because it involved highways and had been issued in the Planning Court. Under paragraph 5.2 of Practice Direction 54D, service was required within the statutory period. Service of an unsealed claim form was ineffective. The sealed claim form was served out of time.
2. Extension of time. Any retrospective extension fell under CPR r.3.1(2)(a), with the discretion exercised by analogy with r.7.6(3). The claimant had to show that she had taken all reasonable steps to serve in time and had applied promptly. She filed no supporting evidence and waited more than 13 months, so the extension was refused.
3. Reopening the earlier decision. Applying Re L (Children) (Preliminary Finding: Power to Reverse) [2013] UKSC 8 and AIC Ltd v Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria [2022] UKSC 16, the court could reconsider its unsealed decision where a potentially decisive legal issue had not been addressed. The balance favoured reopening the decision despite the strong principle of finality.
4. Part 11. Part 11 is a unitary and prescriptive code. A defendant must bring forward its entire jurisdiction challenge in the application made under r.11(1) and (4). If that challenge fails, the acknowledgment of service ceases to have effect under r.11(7), and the defendant cannot bring a second jurisdiction challenge. In any event, a defendant that acknowledged service, pursued an unsuccessful jurisdiction challenge, and then participated in the proceedings could not raise late service for the first time at the final hearing.
5. Merits. The statutory purposes under s.122 of the 1984 Act did not include raising revenue. The officer’s report supported an initial inference that the orders were made for lawful purposes, but the mayor’s repeated statements and the modest evidential benefits of the schemes rebutted that inference. On the balance of probabilities, safeguarding enforcement revenue was the dominant purpose. The orders were therefore unlawful and were quashed. Ground 2 was unnecessary to decide.

First-instance judicial review and statutory challenge. No earlier appellate decision in the same litigation was stated. A prior jurisdiction application was dismissed by Linden J at [2024] EWHC 3061 (Admin) , but that decision was not the judgment under appeal.