R Mark Ian ROYDEN v The Metropolitan Borough of WIRRAL
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY |
| Judgment Date | 15 January 2003 |
| Neutral Citation | [2003] EWCA Civ 08 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 15 January 2003 |
| Docket Number | C1/2002/2202 |
[2003] EWCA Civ 8
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
(Sir Christopher Bellamy QC,
sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge)
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Lord Justice Sedley
C1/2002/2202
MR R CLAYTON QC (instructed by Bindman & Partners, London WC1X 8QB) appeared on behalf of the Applicant
MISS S-J DAVIES (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard, London WC1V 6HG) appeared on behalf of the Respondent
This is an application for permission to appeal against a judgment of Sir Christopher Bellamy QC sitting as a judge of the Administrative Court. Sir Christopher refused to grant judicial review of the respondent local authority's decision to remove the existing limit imposed by it on the number of hackney carriage vehicle licences for their area, that is to say licences to ply for hire.
The statutory background is for once very simple. The old power under the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847 to set from time to time the number of local hackney carriage licences, a power which commonly made these licences coveted and valuable assets, was in effect stood on its head in 1985 by a statutory amendment which forbade any such limitation except where the local authority were satisfied that there was no significant demand for any more taxis. Even then it was a matter of discretion and not obligation to impose a limit. The aim, as Hodgson J said in ( R v Great Yarmouth Borough Council ex parte Sawyer 19 December 1986) was to allow market forces to take their course, leaving a only long-stop power in the hands of the local authority to prevent the market being flooded.
Before I turn to the merits of the present application for permission to appeal, I need to record that when the application came before me as a desk application, the claimant believed that the defendant was in the process of commissioning a fresh demand survey. Accordingly I adjourned this application into open court on notice, noting that any such survey might render an appeal pointless since it was likely to be directed to the taking of a fresh decision. Meanwhile, the local authority had undertaken to issue no further licences, and that I understand still to be the situation today. It turned out that the applicant claimant was mistaken and accordingly the application has come on as previously directed, in open court.
The applicant for permission to appeal represents himself and 91 members of his branch of the Transport and General Workers Union who, like him, hold hackney carriage licences in the Wirral. They are the great majority of the 101 holders of hackney carriage licences under the previous dispensation. They have an obvious and legitimate interest in opposing the opening up of the hackney carriage market in the Wirral. Other drivers who would obtain licences if they could, have an equal and opposite interest in the issue. The public too has an interest, both by virtue of the legislative regime and because it presumably wants to be able to find a taxi in the Wirral when it needs one.
The judge's conclusions, in the course of an extremely full and learned judgment, can be very briefly summarised. They were these. First, the agreed legitimate expectation of consultation between the council and the existing licensees has been honoured. Secondly, there had been no omission by the authority to take relevant matters into account in deciding, as it ultimately did in March 2002, to remove the numerical limit on its hackney carriage licences. Third, the claimant's hackney...
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