News 4
Q&As
What is fettering of discretion in judicial review? When is it an actionable ground of challenge and what must be established for a challenge to succeed?
Save in particular circumstances, a public body cannot prevent itself from properly considering the exercise of its discretion in individual cases. While it may permissibly have guidance or a policy on how it will ordinarily exercise its discretion, it must usually operate any such guidance or policy in a flexible manner.
In British Oxygen Co Ltd v Minister of Technology at para [625], Lord Reid famously stated:
‘The general rule is that anyone who has to exercise a statutory discretion must not “shut his ears to an application”…What the authority must not do is to refuse to listen at all.’
When is it an actionable ground of challenge?
The starting point is Lord Reid’s analysis in British Oxygen. Whenever a public body operates an inflexible policy, it is susceptible to challenge:
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over-rigid policy: Even where a policy is operated flexibly, it may be applied in an overly-rigid manner. If it not
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