R V CRIMINAL INJURIES COMPENSATION BOARD EX PARTE COBB [1995] PIQR P90
 
FACTS:-
 
The Applicant made a claim to the CICB for compensation for injuries, which he claimed had been caused by an unknown assailant, and which caused him loss of consciousness. He told the CICB that he could not recall seeing any police officer at the scne. He also said that at hospital he recalled being told by the police tha the CID would be coming see him, but that he was disorientated and did not recall being asked whether he wished to make a complaint. Several days later, when no-one from  he went ot the police and reported the matter. The police said that they had seen the Applicant at hospital and that he had declined to make a complaint because he had no useful information to give. It was also noted by the police that the Applicant had made the complaint to the police because he had been told that he was eligible for criminal injuries compensation.
 
At the hearing before the CICB, the police officer who had seen the Applicant in hospital did not attend, but he was replaced by another officer. The CICB refused the application for an adjournment, but gave no reasons for doing so. The Applicant’s claim was rejected on the grounds that there had been unreasonable delay on his part in reporting the matter to the police. The Applicant applied for judicial review of the CICB’s decision.
 
 
JUDGEMENT:-
 
Dyson J considered the sequence of events and the evidence. made the following points.
 

1. It was clear that the CICB and now the CICA considered that in matters of procedure it was master in its own house and answerable hardly at all to the requirements of public law. It now had its own procedure but this seemed to be rooted firmly in the past. It was also apparent that in some important respects, those who were called upon to operate the present Scheme had a lack of understanding of the consequences of some of its provisions.
2. Any applicant wishing to review a decision of the CICA would be in difficulties in providing reasons if he did not know the basis of the decision which he was seeking to have reviewed.
3. The Scheme made no positive requirement on the Claims Officer to give reasons for his decision although the Guide stated different. Turner J said that the adjudication of a claim was not merely a matter of administration, since the making of a decision was capable of affecting the rights of a person who was seeking to benefit from the provisions of the Scheme.
4. Any reasons on which the claims officer justified his decision should conform to the requirement of “sufficiency” at the least.
5. There was express requirement that the more senior claims officer would give reasons for his decision. Such reasons would have to be proper, sufficient and intelligible. There was also a need for an evidential basis to be demonstrated, so that the Applicant could submit a reasoned appeal.
6. In accordance with Paragraph 73 of the Scheme, the Applicant (on appeal) would only have made available to him the material available to the Authority at the hearing of his appeal, if not before.
7. The principals reasons advanced by the CICA for withholding the witness statements made to the police, namely the existence of the agreement or undertaking given to the police, had not been made good. The factual and legal basis for such an undertaking or agreement had ceased to exist, since there was no longer any blanket immunity. This was made plain in R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Hickey (No. 2) [1995] 1 WLR 734. It was also puzzling that the CICA chose to make disclosure of such statements at the hearing. The public interest in disclosure meant that such should take place unless there were circumstances which could justify the withholding of documents.
8. The practice of withholding crucial material until the day of the hearing was bound to put one party at a significant disadvantage. Adjournment would not necessarily cure the problem, since it might not be granted.
9. One side effect of the Authority’s refusal to provide reasons for its decisions was that the Applicant would pursue his case as far as possible in order to discover the basis on which his claim had been rejected.
10. Paragraph 13 of the Scheme put the claims officer under a duty to take decision in relation to eligibility to receive compensation. Since the result of the application depended on the conduct of the applicants, the decisions which had to be made were inherently judicial in character.
11. The Authority had put forward a number of reasons for not disclosing the criminal witness statements. These were:-
    1. If witnesses knew that statements were going to be disclosed, it was likely that many would decline to cooperate in case of reprisals.
    2. There was difficulty in circulating statement. They might get into the wrong hands
    3. Claimants might seek to influence the makers of the statements
    4. Statements frequently contained information about police informants
    5. The requirement for disclosure would imposed an intolerable and unjustified burden on the Authority
    6. Early disclosure would encourage legalism and lead to more unnecessary representations
    7. Claimants might be tempted to tailor their own evidence
12. All the reasons put forward were general in character and did not bear on the individual circumstances of the individual cases. However Turner J commented on each point above as follows:-

1. This was now of doubtful validity
2. All the applicants in these cases now had secure addresses
3. There was no reason to suppose that any of the Applicants in these cases would attempt to influence witnesses
4. Police informers fell into an exceptional category and could be dealt with on their own individual facts
5. The burden on the Authority – it was illogical to say that the burden was unjustified if that was what the law required. Little evidence was shown as to the burden.
6. The imagined threat of “legalism” had its origins in the textbooks

1. The fear of excessive legalism was unfounded. The risk that the Authority would be overburdened with an exercise in generating huge quantities of paper was one that might encourage it to provide a gist rather than all the available witness statements.
2. Turner J quoted from a textbook “de Smith, Woolf and Jowell’s Principles of Judicial Review (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1999) where it was said that the courts would now invariably infer a requirement of fairness in the decision-making process, in the absence of clear contrary intent.