Tag: PSED

R (Hough) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

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Queen’s Bench Division, Administrative Court, Planning Court, Lieven J, [2022] EWHC 1635 (Admin), 24 June 2022

The Court ruled that the PSED had not been complied with by Lord Greenhalgh, the relevant Minister, when he granted permission in August 2021 for the use of Napier Barracks in Kent as accommodation for asylum seekers until March 2025. While the minister had recorded his having taken into account an Equality Impact Assessment (‘EqIA’) drawn up on 20 September 2020 and updated on 15 July 2021, that EIA had been based on the premise that the use of the barracks would continue only until 21 September 2021. Continue reading →

R (SPM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department; R (Women for Refugee Women) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

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Queen’s Bench Division, Administrative Court, Lang J, [2022] EWHC 2007 (Admin), 28 July 2022

This case concerned a challenge to the arrangements for providing access to publicly funded legal services for detainees at the women’s immigration removal centre (IRC) of Derwentside, County Durham. The IRC is located some distance from any airport of major city and, as a result of difficulties in securing solicitors to cover the publicly funded Detained Duty Advice Scheme (DDAS), interim arrangements had been put in place under which detainees at Derwentside were not entitled to in-person visits under the DDAS between December 2021 and July 2022. By contrast, detainees held in male IRCs were entitled to face-to-face DDAS visits during this period. Continue reading →

R (Good Law Project Ltd & Anor) v Prime Minister & Anor

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Queen’s Bench Division (Divisional Court): Singh LJ and Swift J, [2022] EWHC 298 (Admin),15 February 2022

This decision is most interesting for its approach to standing, in particular that the Good Law Project’s roving approach to JR challenges did not provide it with standing for such challenges. The Court also rejected the claim of the Runnymeade Trust, which it accepted did have standing on a PSED challenge, to standing to challenge as indirectly discriminatory  the many informal appointments to positions of responsibility which characterised the approach of the UK Government’s approach under the pandemic. Such claims were in the Divisional Court’s view properly brought by individual litigants who sought to challenge their own exclusion from consideration rather than by either claimant, and were not the proper subject of judicial review. Having decided that the Runnymede Trust did have standing to challenge the defendant’s compliance with the PSED the court  concluded that the duty had been breached in relation to two of the appointments. Continue reading →

Biden v Waverley Borough Council

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Court of Appeal: Macur, Asplin and Coulson LJJ, [2022] EWCA Civ 442, 1 April 2022

The Court of Appeal dismissed the claimant’s appeal against the dismissal of her claim that the respondent authority had breached the PSED by failing to make the inquiries the claimant deemed necessary on matters relating to the incidence of gender reassignment hate crime in the area of the accommodation offered to the claimant with the assistance of  an LGBT liaison officer, rather than a police support community officer. Continue reading →

R (Sheakh) v Lambeth London Borough Council

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Court of Appeal; Sir Keith Lindblom, Males and Elisabeth Laing LJJ, [2022] EWCA Civ 457, 5 April 2022

The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal, based on the PSED, from the order of Kerr LJ refusing the claimant’s application for statutory and judicial review of experimental traffic orders (ETOs) creating Low Traffic Neighbourhoods which had been made by the respondent. Continue reading →

R (Police Superintendents’ Association) v HM Treasury

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Administrative Court: Heather Williams J, [2021] EWHC 3389 (Admin), 15 December 2021

This was a challenge to a decision to close legacy public service pension schemes, including police schemes, and to move all active members to reformed pension schemes. The High Court ruled that the decision was unlawful by reason of failures in the consultation process. In addition, and of more relevance to this blog, she ruled that the decision had been taken in breach of the PSED (s149 Equality Act 2010) because the decision was reached prior to the decision-maker having been provided with a draft of the relevant equality impact assessment or a summary of indirect sex discrimination and other equality-related concerns raised by consultees. As Williams J put it at §171: “the PSED is placed on the Minister personally and what matters is what he or she took into account and knew, not what his officials read or summarised or discussed. As I have indicated when setting out the legal principles, the duty must be fulfilled at a time when a particular policy is under consideration, rather than after it has been adopted. Accordingly, there was a breach of the PSED in this regard”.

 

Claimant: Andrew Sharland QC and Stephen Kosmin, instructed by Mariel Irvine Solicitors

Defendant and Interested Party: Catherine Callaghan QC , Raymond Hill and Imogen Proud, instructed by Government Legal Department

 

 

SM (a child, by his father and litigation friend) and another v Hackney LBC

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Queen’s Bench Division (Planning Court): Kerr J, [2021] EWHC 3294 (Admin), 7 December 2021

This was an unsuccessful challenge under Articles 8 and 14 and s149 EqA (the PSED) to experimental traffic orders (ETOs) made by the respondent which took effect from 9 November 2020. The applicants complained that they are severely prejudiced by increased car journey times to and from their school. The challenge was brought under paragraph 35, Part VI, Schedule 9 to the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 rather than by way of judicial review, and so did not require permission, but Kerr J pointed out at §4 that the same principles applied. He expressed sympathy for the applicants who he accepted had been disadvantaged by the ETOs but upheld them as proportionate measures in pursuit of legitimate aims of reducing congestion, improving air quality, road safety and accessibility, encouraging active travel to school and social distancing (applying R (SC) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2021] UKSC 26, [2021] 3 WLR 428 [and see earlier blog]. He rejected the PSED claim on the basis that, taken in the round, the respondent had taken sufficient steps to comply with the duty of due regard.

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R (Rowley) v Minister for the Cabinet Office

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Administrative court; Fordham J, [2021] EWHC 2108, 28 July 2021

In this case the High Court (Fordham J) ruled that the respondent had discriminated against the claimant, who was profoundly deaf, by failing to provide of British sign language (“BSL”) interpreters for Government live briefings to the public about the Covid-19 pandemic on 21 September 2020 and 12 October 2020. The claimant challenged the failures on those occasions and also sought to challenge the respondent’s continuing refusal to use ‘on-platform’ as distinct from ‘in-screen’ BSL interpreters for briefings. The claimant sought to establish failures of the PSED imposed by s149 of the Equality Act 2010 in respect of the  defendant’s ongoing approach to briefings, as well as failures of the duty to make reasonable adjustments imposed by ss20 and 29(7)(a) of the Act. The PSED claim failed as did the reasonable adjustment challenge to ongoing (‘in-screen’ BSL) briefings. The decision includes a comprehensive discussion of the leading authorities on disability discrimination in the context of services/public authorities. Continue reading →

Turani & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department

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Court of Appeal: Underhill VP, Simler and Warby LJJ, [2021] EWCA Civ 348, 15 March 2021

The Court considered an appeal from a High Court decision which had rejected indirect race discrimination and PSED challenges to the application of the Defendant’s ex gratia scheme to support and assist third-country national refugees outside the UK who have fled the conflict in Syria. The case is important, if somewhat disheartening to equality lawyers, for its conclusions on the (limited) extra-territorial effect of the Equality Act 2010. It is worth emphasising that the Court of Appeal’s approval of the High Court’s conclusions on justification were subject to the proviso that the limited evidence on which the High Court was prepared to find in the Defendant’s favour was the result of the way in which the claim had developed post-issue; as Underhill LJ, concurring with Simler LJ leading judgment, stated at §110: “the story is indeed a good illustration of the perils of “rolling judicial review”. Continue reading →

R (Blundell & Ors) v SSWP; R (Day) v SSWP

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Administrative Court: Kerr J, [2021] EWHC 608 (Admin), 17 March 2021

The Claimants unsuccessfully challenged the Defendant’s policy of making deductions at a fixed rate from universal credit (UC) to pay off criminal fines. So far as relevant here, the claim alleged breach of the PSED (s149 Equality Act 2010) and unlawful indirect disability discrimination. The latter claim failed on the evidence, Kerr J pointing out that it would more suitably have been brought in the county court. The Judge did accept that the Defendant had breached the PSED but ruled against the claimants on the basis that compliance with the PSED would very likely have made no difference and that, therefore, s31A of the Senior Courts Act 1981 defeated the claim. Continue reading →