Starmer vows to take on 'Nimbys' with JR curbs

Prime minister Keir Starmer has vowed to take on so-called 'Nimbys' who use the courts to block major infrastructure projects with reforms that will curb judicial review.

Downing Street announced today that nuclear plants, railway lines and windfarms will be built more quickly following rule changes that will ‘stop blockers getting in the way of the government’s Plan for Change’. 

Opponents wishing to challenge major infrastructure projects in court currently have three attempts to obtain permission: writing to the High Court; at an oral permission hearing before the High Court if permission is refused at the written stage; and at a hearing before the Court of Appeal if permission is refused at the oral permission hearing.

Some 58% of all recent decisions on major infrastructure have been challenged in court, the government said. Each legal challenge, on average, takes around 18 months to be resolved and the courts spent over 10,000 working days handling these cases.

The government proposed two reforms: one would scrap the paper permission stage enirely. Then, if at an oral hearing, the High Court deems a case totally without merit, claimants will not be able to ask the Court of Appeal to reconsider.

Lord Banner KC, who led an independent review on legal challenges against national significant infrastructure projects, said: ‘My review concluded that there is a clear case for streamlining judicial reviews on consenting decisions for nationally significant infrastructure projects, given that delays to these projects cause real detriment to the public interest.

‘In the course of my review, I saw broad consensus from claimants to scheme promoters that a quicker system of justice would be in their interests, provided that cases can still be tried fairly.

‘I am therefore pleased to see the government acting on the back of my review. In particular, reducing the number of permission attempts to one for truly hopeless cases should weed out the worst offenders, without risking inadvertent delays because judges choose to err on the side of caution.’

The Conservative administration came under fire for trying to curb judicial review after the party pledged in its 2019 manifesto to end the 'abuse' of judicial review. The Judicial Review and Courts Act, which came into force in 2022, gave judges powers to award suspended and prospective-only quashing orders, and removed upper tribunal decisions from the scope of further challenge.

Lee Marsons, senior research fellow at Public Law Project, said that rather than impose barriers on access to justice, a better solution would be for the Labour government to provide the courts with the resources they need to speedily decide cases.

'The government’s proposal is, in effect, that all parties - including public authorities and the government - should have to pay for the legal costs of attending oral permission hearings, even when written permission would have been enough. While the increased costs of these proposals are guaranteed across the board, the benefits are completely unguaranteed,' Marsons added.

Jo Maugham, executive director of Good Law Project, said: 'They might make a good story but there is no real substance to these changes. A rule blocking an appeal against the dismissal of a meritless judicial review already exists. It can be found in [Civil Procedure Rule] 54.12(7).'