R v Secretary of State for Transport ex parte Richmond upon Thames LBC (No.2)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Date | 1995 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
Court of Appeal
Before Mr Justice Latham
Judicial review - aircraft noise - decisions contrary to stated policy
Decisions made by the Secretary of State for Transport were made unlawfully where they were made contrary to stated policy and without acknowledgment of the change in his position.
Mr Justice Latham so held in upholding, to the extent of declaratory relief only, the applications of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Tandridge District Council, the London Borough of Hillingdon and Slough Borough Council for certiorari to quash the decisions of the Secretary of State for Transport to introduce new flying restrictions at Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted made on October 12, 1993, February 1, 1994 and May 6, 1994.
The secretary of state's decisions were intended to give effect to proposals to restrict flying to and from Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick airports at night by allocating points to each kind of aircraft so that the quietest were allocated 0.5 points then ranging through 1, 2, 4, 8, to 16 for the loudest type of aircraft.
Total noise quota counts were then imposed by which there were to be no more flights by aircraft of all kinds than amounted to the use of 5,000 points for the winter and 7,000 for the summer at Heathrow and for Gatwick those figures were to be 6,450 and 9,000 respectively.
The secretary of state had made an earlier decision to introduce a new regime for night flights which had been successfully challenged by judicial review before Mr Justice Laws (The Times October 12, 1993). The decisions that were the subject of the present challenge were intended to introduce the new night flying provisions in a more acceptable form.
Mr Richard Gordon, QC and Mr Alan Maclean for the applicants; Mr Ian Burnett and Mr Mark Shaw for the secretary of state.
MR JUSTICE LATHAM said the applicants' arguments pertaining to legitimate expectation had two aspects. One was that the secretary of state's decisions were invalid as he had promised or undertaken that noise levels would be reduced, or at least made no worse but that the regime for noise levels introduced by his decisions would allow for greater noise.
That was rejected by Mr Justice Laws as a matter of principle but the applicants now sought to...
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