Spring snow prevented Obiter from realising an ambition to visit Wednesbury, home of the eponymous test of a public body’s reasonableness, during a visit to the West Midlands the other week. However, at the annual weekend school run by Lawyers in Local Government we did bump into a genuine Wednesbury resident.

David Travers QC of 6 Pump Court told a workshop on judicial review that his adopted home town has one claim to fame apart from the 1947 judgment in Associated Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation. ‘We had an earthquake a few years ago, which caused several hundred thousand pounds worth of improvements.’