Administrative

Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority - inordinate and inexcusable delay in determining claim unreasonable - authority to be ordered to determine claim within 28 days but no damages for breach of convention rights

R (H) v Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority: QBD (Mr Justice McCombe): 11 November 2002

H received catastrophic brain injuries at the age of four weeks when he was shaken violently by one of his parents.

In consequence he suffered from, among other things, cerebral atrophy, incontinence and a severe loss of balance and mobility; he would need full-time care for the rest of his life and was not expected to live beyond the age of 30.

H applied to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) for compensation in December 1998.

CICA made a number of requests for information as to his injuries and care requirements, the last of which had been complied with by his solicitors by September 2001.

H sought judicial review of the failure of CICA to determine his claim, by way of an order that the claim be determined within 28 days and damages under the Human Rights Act 1998 for the infringement of his rights under article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Timothy Trotman (instructed by Graham Leigh Pfeffer & Co, Bury) for H; Steven Kovats (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor)for CICA.

Held, granting judicial review, that most cases should be resolved within 28 days of the CICA receiving the information they had requested from the applicant; that, while this was an unusually complex case, there had been at least four months' inactivity in the period from September 2001 for which there was no rational explanation; that, while it was surprising that the local authority had made no provision for H pursuant to section 17(6) of the Children Act 1989, for all practical purposes local authority care was not available and CICA should have determined the claim on that basis; that the inordinate and inexcusable delay in processing H's claim, coupled with CICA's subsequent requests for irrelevant material at odds with earlier indications as to how the claim would be assessed, rendered CICA's failure to determine the claim Wednesbury unreasonable; that the court would order that the claim be determined within 28 days; but that in view of that order it was unnecessary further to consider article 6 and it would be premature to award damages pursuant to the 1998 Act.