\
[New search]
[Printable RTF version]
[Help]
IN
THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
LTA
97/7700 CSMS4
IN
THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION
)
APPLICATION
FOR LEAVE TO APPEAL
Royal
Courts of Justice
Strand
London
W2A 2LL
Thursday,
19th February 1998
B
e f o r e
LORD
JUSTICE SWINTON THOMAS
LORD
JUSTICE ROBERT WALKER
REGINA
v.
BRENTWOOD
BOROUGH COUNCIL
Respondent
EX
PARTE GEOFFREY DENNIS PECK
Applicant
(Computer
Aided Transcription of the Stenograph Notes of
Smith
Bernal Reporting Limited, 180 Fleet Street
London
EC4A 2HD
Tel:
0171 404 1424
Official
Shorthand Writers to the Court)
MR
RICHARD GORDON QC
(instructed by Legal Department, Liberty, London SE1 4LA) appeared on behalf of
the Applicant.
THE
RESPONDENT
did not appear and was not represented.
J
U D G M E N T
(As
approved by the Court
)
©Crown
Copyright
LORD
JUSTICE SWINTON THOMAS: This is an application for leave to appeal from a
judgment given by Harrison J on 25th November 1997, when he dismissed an
application by the applicant, Mr Geoffrey Dennis Peck, for judicial review of a
decision by the Brentwood Borough Council and a declaration that the council
acted unlawfully in disclosing a film of the applicant on the council's closed
circuit television. The facts giving rise to the application were very
unfortunate indeed and undoubtedly and very naturally caused distress to the
applicant.
Very
briefly the facts were these. As the applicant says in his affidavit in
support of the application which was sworn in May 1996, on 20th August 1995 he
attempted to commit suicide. He went to the centre of Brentwood, where he cut
his wrist with a kitchen knife. Subsequently, while he was holding the knife,
he was filmed by a closed circuit television system which had been installed by
the council in the area for the purpose of preventing crime. It is not
suggested in any way that this applicant had committed a crime. The filming of
the incident went through to the police station and was then subsequently
disclosed in a press release. The incident was later shown on Anglia
Television and also on the BBC. Although in the Anglia programme the
applicant's face was masked, he could still readily be identified in both of
those programmes, and, as I said, that caused him distress. He made complaints
to the relevant complaints body in respect of each television organisation,
and, as I understand it, his complaints were upheld. Those complaints were
against the television companies and not in relation to the council.
It
was submitted to the judge by Mr Gordon QC on behalf of the applicant and is
submitted by him to us, first, that the council had no statutory power to
distribute this material to the media for transmission and so acted unlawfully
in doing so; and, secondly, that the council acted unlawfully because it or its
officers never addressed the source of its power. It was submitted to Harrison
J as a third submission that the council acted irrationally in distributing the
film, but that submission is not pursued on this application or in the proposed
appeal.
Each
of those submissions was considered by Harrison J in his judgment, and it is
not necessary for me to repeat the judge's findings in detail. He set out Mr
Gordon's submissions, which again have been set out carefully and very clearly
in his skeleton argument and in the oral submissions that he has made
succinctly to us today. The judge held that the council had power to
distribute the footage under the provisions of section 163 of the
Criminal
Justice and Public Order Act 1994. It was submitted to him that the primary
function of that section was the provision of a closed circuit television
system and not the prevention of crime. The central finding of the judge, as I
see it, is to be found on page 13 of his judgment, where the judge said this:
"The
making available for the media of footage from the CCTV film to show the
effectiveness of the system can properly be said, in my judgment, to be
incidental to and to facilitate the discharge of the Council's function under
section 163 because it thereby increased, or tended to increase, the
preventative effect of the equipment which they were providing for the purposes
of prevention of crime. In other words, I agree with the reason given by
Buxton J (as he then was) when refusing leave on the papers and, for reasons
that I have already given, I do not accept Mr Gordon's submission that that is
confusing the primary function of section 163."
Mr
Gordon submitted that the judge was wrong to come to that conclusion and it
cannot have a secondary meaning, namely the benefit of the prevention of crime.
Harrison J went on to hold that there was a sufficient nexus between the
statutory power granted and the act of the council in distributing the footage.
The
second submission made was and is that if the council did have power to
distribute the film footage to the media it nonetheless acted unlawfully
because it failed to consider the statutory source of that power. That
submission, in part at any rate, was based on the decision of this court in
R
v Somerset County Council ex parte Fewings
[1995] 1 WLR 1037. Mr Gordon concedes that
Fewings
was a very different case from this case, but nonetheless he submits that the
principle applied by the majority in
Fewings
applies to this case. The judge came to the conclusion that there was nothing
which could be said to be a relevant constraint on the exercise of the
council's statutory powers if the council did not take them into account.
Again Mr Gordon submits that the judge was wrong as a matter of law to come to
that conclusion.
This
application is a renewed application following refusal on the papers by the
single Lord Justice. As I indicated when reading a passage from Harrison J's
judgment, initially leave to move was also refused by Buxton J. This matter
was, in my judgment, very carefully considered by Harrison J, and, having
considered the papers and Mr Gordon's submissions, it is my view that the judge
came to the right conclusion for the very reasons that he gave in his judgment.
Accordingly, I do not consider that there is a reasonable prospect of
successfully appealing against that decision, and, for my part, I would refuse
leave.
LORD
JUSTICE ROBERT WALKER: I agree that this application should be dismissed for
the reasons stated by my Lord.
ORDER:
Application dismissed; legal aid taxation.
BAILII:
Copyright Policy |
Disclaimers |
Privacy Policy |
Feedback |
Donate to BAILII
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/1998/296.html