R A v B Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE LLOYD JONES |
| Judgment Date | 07 March 2007 |
| Neutral Citation | [2007] EWHC 1529 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | CO/10687/2006 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 07 March 2007 |
[2007] EWHC 1529 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Mr Justice Lloyd Jones
CO/10687/2006
MR N GIFFIN QC (instructed by Biscoes) appeared on behalf of the CLAIMANT
MR P COPPEL (instructed by B Council) appeared on behalf of the DEFENDANT
This is an application for permission to apply for judicial review. The claimant seeks permission to challenge a decision by B County Council ("the Council") taken on 26th September 2006 not to permit its education transport contractors to use the claimant as a sub-contractor driver in the performance of education transport contracts. On 24th January 2007 Forbes J directed that the matter be listed for oral hearing of the permission application with the substantive hearing to follow immediately if granted. He also granted expedition and made directions.
The Council provides home to school transport for some 25,000 pupils a day in accordance with its responsibilities under the Education Act. About 60 per cent of these pupils attend mainstream schools. The balance attend special needs schools for children with learning difficulties and/or physical disabilities. The Council has a large number of contracts with companies and firms for the provision of this education transport. The conditions of contract are the same for all contractors. The conditions which applied for non-PSV vehicles from December 1994 until 2006 included the following:
"2.5 The contractor must not under any circumstances employ a driver for the operation of the contract who has any unspent criminal convictions involving violence, or offences to children. All known criminal convictions must be notified to the Council and will be considered in strict confidence …
2.7 The Council shall be entitled to object to the employment of any driver, on a school contract, whose conduct is considered by the Council to be inappropriate. This may include conduct inappropriate having regard to the age and number of children to be conveyed and any physical/learning difficulties they may have, or incidents of a racial or sexual nature."
Similar conditions appear in the arrangements in relation to PSV vehicles, and these provisions also make specific provision for "escorts". These are appointed by the Council and their responsibility is the supervision and care of the children on the vehicle.
In August 2006 the Council changed its conditions. Its new conditions include paragraph 6.1.4 which provides:
"The contractor shall on the request of the Council remove from any or all contracts, any or all of its personnel that the Council deems unsuitable to perform the service. The Council's primary consideration in such cases is the safety and well-being of passengers."
While some companies and firms engage employees to perform their contracts, others subcontract to independent contractors in order to meet their contractual obligations. Following an incident involving such a driver, from 2003 the Council required its transport contractors to check the suitability of any new driver by relying on enhanced disclosure from the Criminal Records Bureau ("CRB"). In April 2005 the Council advised its education transport contractors that it now required that all drivers (that is, not just those taken on after 2003) used by contractors in contracts with the Council to transport children and vulnerable adults should be CRB checked.
The claimant was born on 27th November 1959. She holds a combined hackney carriage and private hire driver's licence which was issued by a District Council. Between 1999 and 2005 she had been a self-employed driver working for a firm providing education transport to the Council. It had a contract with the defendant to transport children with special educational needs on a daily basis to two schools in another county where the defendant had placed them. The claimant became involved in this work after her own daughter with special needs mentioned the fact that the existing driver was leaving.
The claimant, in the course of this work, drove a minibus with wheelchair access, usually carrying between four and six children. Another individual worked as the escort on the minibus. It is accepted that there were never any complaints concerning the manner in which the claimant performed her duties.
In 2005 the claimant decided to change the firm for which she provided her driving services. The new firm advised her that the CRB procedure would need to be complied with, and accordingly an application under the CRB procedure was duly made. This disclosed that the claimant has a number of criminal convictions. These fall into three groups.
The first group of convictions contains convictions for offences for which she was sentenced on 2nd February 1976 before a Juvenile Court. On that occasion the offences were four offences of threats to kill. The sentence in each case was a Supervision Order of 2 years concurrent. Threats to kill were contained in four letters sent to a teacher at the school at which the claimant was then a pupil. I have seen the letters. They are very frightening and disturbing.
The background to these offences is apparent from the Social Services file which was obtained by the Council with the consent of the claimant during the course of the Council investigation into the claimant's application. This records that the claimant had been involved in several incidents concerning the use of weapons—guns, an air pistol, a shotgun and knives—that she had been involved in stalking teachers, setting fire to a room at her home, severely damaging it to the extent that the fire brigade was called, false imprisonment, sending threatening letters, threats to kill and criminal damage. It revealed that on two occasions she had returned to the school from which she had been excluded, rejoined her old class and, as the file put it, "had a go at her old teacher". She pointed a knife at the teacher and slashed the teacher's tyres. She had also attempted to strangle the teacher.
The second group of offences resulted in convictions on 19th May 1976. This time the matters were before the Crown Court and were considerably more serious. She was convicted of having a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence contrary to section 18(1) of the Firearms Act 1968, possessing a firearm while committing an offence contrary to section 17(2) of the Firearms Act 1968, and using a firearm to resist arrest contrary to section 17(1) of the Firearms Act 1968. On the third count, that of using a firearm to resist arrest, she was sentenced to 7 years' detention pursuant to section 53(2) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1953. No separate penalty was imposed on the other counts.
The information on the Social Services file reveals that following her suspension from school as a result of sending death threats to the teacher, the claimant had returned to the school bearing a loaded shotgun together with a quantity of rounds (12 in total). She had gone into the classroom where the teacher (who had been the subject of the threats to kill) was present and put that teacher in fear of her life. She then falsely imprisoned over 20 pupils who were present. When the teacher fled and locked herself into the adjoining preparation room, she took a pupil and held a gun to the pupil's head in an attempt to force the teacher to leave the preparation room. Despite requests from other teachers and the police, she still held hostage other pupils, who were 32 in number. When the police overpowered her, the shotgun was discharged into the ceiling; the falling debris slightly injured a child in the room. After she was overpowered by the police she tried to escape but was recaptured.
The Council made further enquiries from the members of staff at the school in relation to the incident. They were informed that the offence was a personal vendetta conducted against this particular teacher by the claimant. The incident had lasted some hours and, until the police decided to rush in and overpower her, showed no prospect of ending peaceably.
The third group of offences resulted in convictions in the Crown Court on 17th May 1977. The offences were two counts of false imprisonment and one count of wounding contrary to section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The sentence in each case was a Hospital Order made pursuant to sections 60 and 65 of the Mental Health Act 1959. I am grateful to Mr Giffin QC who has identified the criteria for the making of an order under that statute. The judge was required to be satisfied that the claimant was suffering from a psychopathic disorder as defined in section 4 of the Act to a nature or degree that warranted detention in hospital for treatment.
The circumstances giving rise to those offences were that while the claimant was detained in Borstal, where she was placed in the psychotherapeutic unit, she was involved in an escape attempt during which she carried a knife. A prison officer was slightly wounded whilst disarming the claimant. That resulted in the imposition of the Hospital Order. There is no official record of the sentencing remarks in the papers but the sentencing judge is reported as having said that on the basis of medical evidence he was satisfied that the claimant needed treatment in her own interests and in the interests of society.
These were clearly very serious and dangerous offences, and Mr Giffin, who has appeared on...
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