| LOCAL GOVERNMENT — Re-organisation — Boundary Committee’s powers — Boundary committee considering local authority re-organisation at request of Secretary of State — Power to make “an alternative proposal” — Boundary committee considering itself limited to making single proposal — Whether reference to “an alternative proposal” including the plural — Whether contrary indication to general rule that words in singular including words in plural — Interpretation Act 1978, s 6(c) — Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, s 5(3)(c)(5)
East Devon District Council v Boundary Committee of the Electoral Commission [2009] EWHC 4 (Admin); WLR(D) 5
QBD: Cranston J: 8 January 2009
The power under s 5(3)(c) of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 for the Boundary Committee of the Electoral Commission to make “an alternative proposal” enabled the Committee to make two or more proposals.
Cranston J so held when allowing in part a claim for judicial review brought by the claimant, East Devon District Council, of the approach taken by the defendant, the Boundary Committee of the Electoral Commission, to a request for advice made by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government under s 4 of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 in relation to a proposal made by Exeter City Council pursuant to s 2 of the 2007 Act.
CRANSTON J said that the claim related to the Boundary Committee’s review of local government in Devon carried out at the request of the Secretary of State following her rejection of a proposal by Exeter City Council for a new unitary authority on the grounds that that proposal failed the criterion of affordability. In July 2008 the Boundary Committee had produced a draft proposal which deferred consideration of affordability, but in October and November the Boundary Committee displayed detailed financial data on its website and invited observations. The Boundary Committee’s approach had been challenged on several grounds. As decided in Breckland District Council v Boundary Committee [2008] EWHC 2929 (Admin), consultation could properly proceed in stages, so that the decision to defer the issue of affordability was not improper: nor was it irrational. While it was correct that consultation should not be narrowly confined to expert opinion, but should extend to the public as a whole, and that consultation required the publication of sufficient information in a timely fashion, the Boundary Committee had not failed in these respects. The Boundary Committee had given proper consideration to the earlier Exeter proposal and had duly reached its own decision on the matter. Nor had it been in error in considering the requirement that any proposal must “in aggregate” have to deliver outcomes specified in the five applicable criteria. Its considerations had, however, been constrained by legal advice that it could advance only one alternative proposal. The argument was that, in defining the meaning of “an alternative proposal” in s 5(3)(c) of the Local Government and Public Involvement In Health Act 2007, s 5(5)(b) (“a proposal consisting of two or more proposals that are within paragraph (a) (and are not alternatives to one another)”) showed a contrary intention to the general rule in s 6(c) of the Interpretation Act 1978 that words in the singular included words in the plural. That argument could not be accepted. That provision contemplated only that an alternative proposal might consist of two or more proposals provided that they stood or fell together, and the context, in particular the legislative purposes, pointed in the direction of the Boundary Committee being able to advance more than one proposal.
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