Platt L () (Institute for Social and Economic Research) Sunkin M (University of Essex) Calvo K () (University of Essex)
Abstract
This paper raises some of the key issues that have emerged from our study of the impact of judicial review litigation on the quality of local government services in England and Wales. Judicial Review is the High Court procedure by which those with a ‘sufficient interest’ can challenge decisions of public authorities on the grounds that authorities have failed to meet their legal obligations, including human rights obligations; or have acted unfairly or exceeded or abused their legal powers (or threatened to do these things). The paper discusses whether or not a greater engagement with public law litigation, as experienced in the UK in recent times, may be leading to improvements or declines – in access to services and in service delivery for individuals and classes of services user, to improvements in the clarity and accountability of processes within local authorities, and to greater levels of legal awareness, including the furtherance of the practical application of the rule of law. We focus on two areas of local authority activity: housing and homelessness and children’s services; and we distinguish in the paper between the impact of challenges, and the impact of judicial decisions. The paper draws on a series of qualitative interviews with ‘key informants’ in local authorities; and presents analyses of judicial review decisions of national significance in the area of children’s services. Our conclusions at this stage are tentative and indicate areas that we intend to pursue further. Our most general observation is that judicial review is a significant aspect of an environment that over the past two decades has subjected local authorities to an increasing range of external regulatory and controlling mechanisms. Against this background, we observe that judicial review is distinctive in various ways. We identify several potentially distinctive features of judicial review from a quality perspective, including its focus on individual problems, its ability to subject decisions to close scrutiny and its ability to provide authoritative statements as to local authorities’ duties. We also consider the circumstances under which decisions are likely to have most (or least) impact on the working and quality of local authority services.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for Social and Economic Research in its series ISER working papers with number
2007-34.
Length: 47 Date of creation: 11 Jan 2008 Date of revision: Publication status: published Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2007-34
Contact details of provider: Postal: Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK Phone: 44-1206-872957 Fax: 44-1206-873151 Web page: http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/
Order Information: Postal: Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK Email: Web: http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Paul Groves).
Related research
Keywords:
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
Did you know? All full texts are decentralized with the publishers, none reside on this server, thus making it possible to offer this service for free to all parties.