The cost of access to JR

Public Law Project (PLP) Legal Director Alison Pickup gave a talk on the cost barriers to accessing judicial review at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights conference earlier this year.

Alison’s talk focussed on the importance of introducing special costs rules for judicial review as a way of improving access to justice and the ability to challenge unlawful decision-making for litigants of modest means.

Our Deputy Legal Director Sara Lomri has also written a blog on the inaccessibility of judicial review as a means of redress for those who fall out of the scope of legal aid, and on the Government’s failure to address such concerns in its consultation on Fixed Recoverable Costs earlier this year, to which PLP responded.

As reported by the Law Society Gazette, PLP recently received a response to an FOI request which revealed that the Government does not hold notes of a meeting – which was referred to in the Government’s consultation – at which Sir Rupert Jackson’s proposals for extending the Aarhus rule to all judicial reviews were dismissed.

For a more in-depth look at the cost barriers to judicial review, read PLP’s research paper, Financial Barriers to Accessing Judicial Review: An Initial Assessment by Ravi Low-Beer and Dr Joe Tomlinson.