The government wants to create a specialist planning court for judicial reviews on planning applications.
It believes the creation of a Specialist Planning Chamber in the Upper Tribunal, with its own judges and separate procedural rules setting specific time limits, will speed up the planning process.
The new chamber would build on a government initiative introduced in July in the Administrative Court, the Planning Fast-Track, which identifies planning related-reviews at an early stage and refers them on to judges with experience in the area. Stuart Andrews, partner at Eversheds, says: “We have been calling for a specialist court of this type for some time as it would ease delays that hold up major building projects.”
The speedy planning hub forms part of the Ministry of Justice’s current consultation, Judicial review: proposals for further reform, which is geared to cutting the number of judicial review applications. A record number of applications were lodged last year, mainly driven by a rise in immigration and asylum cases. And applications have doubled in number in the last six years, from 6,683 in 2007 to 12,434 in 2012, according to figures gathered by Sweet & Maxwell. More than three-quarters of these (9,469) relate to immigration or asylum.
Maurice Sunkin, Professor of Public Law and Socio-Legal Studies, University of Essex, says: “It’s not the growth in judicial review claims that is surprising and disconcerting. It is that beyond immigration, judicial review has not grown more. Despite apparent increases in levels of challenge, things are by no means as bad as they seem for the government. Planned reforms will divert substantial numbers of immigration and asylum cases towards immigration tribunals and away from the judicial review process.”
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