Judicial Review

We are specialists in judicial review. 

Whether you are facing a judicial review challenge or considering bringing one, our team of specialists can advise you on each stage of the process.

Bates Wells is one of a very small number of firms which has a genuine, stand-alone public and regulatory law team, specialising in judicial review.  We have an impressive track record in high profile and complex challenges at all levels of the domestic system, as well as in the European Court of Human Rights.  

How we can help

We see judicial review as a specialist area. Cases must be brought on bespoke grounds, they are governed by a separate set of procedural rules, and they require consideration of issues that don’t arise in other types of litigation.

Our team benefits from the diverse expertise gained by our lawyers in their pre-Bates Wells careers; some have defended judicial reviews while working for government departments, others have brought claims while working in-house in the non-profit sector. As a result, they see proceedings from every side.

Our extensive judicial review experience includes:
  • Acting for a claimant challenging an attempt by the Charity Commission to curtail trustee grant making powers.
  • Representing the RSPCA intervening in a challenge to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for failing to enforce animal welfare standards in relation to broiler chickens.
  • Acting for a claimant challenging the Foreign Office’s decision to cut the overseas aid budget.
  • Advising a school governing body on a potential challenge to the lawfulness of its consultation on a proposal to academise.
  • Advising the Ramblers’ Association in relation to a number of judicial reviews, including a challenge to a Planning Inspector’s refusal to confirm a local council’s order for the creation of a public footpath.
  • Defending the first ever application for judicial review brought against the Waterways Ombudsman.
  • Defending Airport Coordination Limited against a challenge brought by the administrators of Monarch Airlines concerning the status of the airline’s take-off and landing slots post-insolvency.

Our lawyers also bring diverse judicial review experience from their previous roles, including, for example:

  • Acting for the claimant in a challenge to the Department of Health and Social Care regarding the award (during the Covid-19 pandemic) of a multi-million pound PPE contract to a company with links to a Government Minister.
  • Acting for various central Government departments in challenges across many sectors, including defence, immigration, policing, and health.
  • Acting for an airport developer in defending a challenge to the grant of a Development Consent Order.
  • Advising a conservation charity and its co-claimants in a challenge to DEFRA’s failure to take adequate action on sewage discharges.
  • Defending various NHS bodies against challenges to their service reconfiguration plans.
  • Defending a national sports body against a challenge relating to its definition of sport.
  • Representing a claimant doctor in a challenge to a regulator’s refusal to instigate fitness to practise proceedings against a practitioner promoting anti-vaccine views.
  • Representing an individual challenging the Secretary of State for the Home Department’s decision to certify the individual’s asylum claim as “clearly unfounded”.
  • Acting for an environmental regulator defending a challenge to its new regulations (in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal).
Meet our team