Is Judicial review reform a faster route for infrastructure, or a new front for legal challenge?
The Government’s plans to extend judicial review reforms from critical energy schemes to all major infrastructure projects have been positioned as a central part of its drive to unlock growth and reduce delays to nationally significant developments.
In a speech at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, Chancellor John Healey said the Government would take action to address a system in which major projects can face repeated legal challenges, consultations and reviews before construction begins. The proposals would extend restrictions previously announced for critical energy projects to all major infrastructure schemes, with the aim of preventing what the Chancellor described as “vexatious litigation” from blocking economic growth.
Dispute Resolution Partner, Paolo Caldato, said the Chancellor’s approach should be welcomed in principle, but warned that it is unlikely to remove legal challenge altogether.
“The Chancellor’s plan to shield Critical National Importance Projects from standard judicial reviews is a welcome step for national resilience. In practice, however, it will not stop ‘lawfare’; it will simply force it to evolve.
This proposal is caught between two fundamental, contradictory tensions. Constitutionally, bypassing standard judicial oversight risks eroding democratic accountability and executive checks and balances. Practically, leaving a human rights safeguard opens an obvious loophole. Because the UK remains a signatory to the ECHR, legal challengers will simply re-shape their claims around Article 8 rights.
The real victory for the Treasury won’t be stopping legal challenges entirely, but compressing the calendar. By forcing these inevitable human rights battles into a hyper-accelerated court timetable, the government may successfully prevent legal actions from causing the multi-year construction delays that have historically paralysed British infrastructure.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether these proposals will survive the inevitable backlash that the Chancellor will face from backbench Labour MPs.”
Paolo was featured by The Times, The Legal Diary, Construction News, Law Society Gazette
