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As was pointed out in the Interim Report, the utility of such a rule is in doubt. CPR
54.19(2) reflects the court's general approach on a judicial review and, being well-
established in administrative law, is not a necessary rule. However, sub-rule (3)
proposes an approach which, save in the rarest of cases, would be inappropriate. As
stated in the White Book :-
"Judicial review is primarily concerned with controlling the exercise by public bodies of
statutory or other public law powers conferred upon by them. The role of the court is to
ensure that those bodies do not exercise those powers unlawfully; it is not the role of the
court to determine how those powers should be exercised. Normally, therefore, the courts will
not be in a position to determine that there is no purpose to be served in remitting the matter
to the decision-maker and taking the decision itself."
There may be cases where a decision has been quashed and where the court or the
applicant considers that only one specific decision could reasonably be taken in its
place such that, theoretically, any other decision would be reviewable by the court as
Wednesbury unreasonable.
It might be thought that in such cases, the rule in CPR
54.19(3) would have a role to play.
An argument along the abovementioned lines was in fact advanced in the Court of
Final Appeal in Prem Singh v Director of Immigration [2003] 1 HKLRD 550 at 580-3,
§§96-107. Each of the parties argued that if the decision under judicial review was
quashed, only one result could follow. In other words, each was contending that an
outcome, diametrically opposed to the other's outcome, was the inevitable result.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, both arguments were rejected. The Court held that on the
available materials, it was in no position to postulate that any particular result of re-
consideration by the Director of Immigration was inevitable.
Notes
White Book 54.19.2.
As May LJ put it in R (on the application of Dhadly) v London Borough of Greenwich [2001] EWCA
Civ 1822, at §16: "The circumstances in which r 54.19(3) applies are essentially those where there is
only one substantive decision that is capable of being made and where it is a waste of time to send
the thing back to the decision-making body."
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