See also Neil Gerrard memo to Labour Members | May 12, 1987. |
See index | |
LONDON BOROUGH OF WALTHAM FOREST From: COUNCILLOR N.F. GERRARD To ALL LABOUR COUNCILLORS via Members' Secretary Ext. 4340 29th May, 1987 PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL You have already received the report for the special meeting ofGeneral Purposes Sub-Committee held yesterday. Enclosed with thismemorandum is a second report which was circulated at the meeting. Youwill see from this second report that the legal process has now beenstarted by the Ratepayers1 Action Group. What is likely to happen now isthat once the papers which have been lodged with the Crown Office have beenchecked by that Office to ensure that they are technically correct, theapplication for leave will be issued and Writs will be served on theCouncil and almost certainly on individual Members as well. That willprobably happen during the next few days. When the Writ is served, you willalso be sent all the documents which have been lodged with the CrownOffice, including the Affidavits and the evidence which has been submittedby the Ratepayers' Action Group. Perhaps I should warn you that this willbe a very large amount of paper, most of which you will have seen beforesince a lot of it is committee reports, copies of minutes and one bundle issimply copies of reports from the local paper. Once the papers have been issued next week, the first stage of theproceedings is likely to happen within a week or two from that date. Thatfirst stage will not be in open court but will be a hearing before a Judgein Chambers, who will decide whether the full judicial review should beheard. If the Ratepayers' Action Group do get leave from the Judge for thefull judicial review, they are likely to ask for it to be expedited, whichwould almost certainly be in the Council's interest as well to removeuncertainty. The full hearing would then take place in the High Court.The exact timing is not clear at this stage, but will depend partly on theCourt's timetable and also partly on the details of the case. The solicitors believe that it is quite probable that the Ratepayers'Action Group will get over the first hurdle and will get leave to go forthe full judicial review. This is based firstly on the fact that the HighCourt in general has acted in this way before. The case which is thenearest precedent to the once we are involved in, which took place withGreenwich a year or two ago, did go to the full judicial review, but theratepayers' case in Greenwich was thrown out at the judicial review stage.In other words, the fact that they may get leave to go for judicial reviewwill not indicate the Court's view on the strength of their case. You will see from the report to General Purposes that if Writs areserved on all the Labour Members individually, we will need to arrange our own representation. I am getting in touch with a solicitor who hasacted for other Labour Councillors in similar types of case before. Ithink it would be most sensible for the same solicitor to act for all theLabour Members and will work on this assumption. Depending on the adviceof the solicitor, it may be possible for us to keep the costs low by usingthe same Barrister as the Council. Once I have contacted the solicitor andhave a clear idea of the likely costs, I will inform all Members. Please get in touch with me if you want any more information aboutwhat is happening. NEIL GERRARD MR (Margaret Rollason) |
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