Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System

The creation of the Administrative Justice Council – replacing the Administrative Justice Forum – was announced in December 2017.

It has now started work. In July 2018 it held its first meeting, the minutes of which have just been published.

The Council is a relatively large body – some 40 participants – who have a wide range of experience of the administrative justice system. The overall direction of the programme is led by a steering group drawn from the wider Council membership. Much of its work is to be done through sub-committees. The first two sub-committees – academic, and pro bono – started work before the first full meeting and fed their progress to date into the main Council meeting. In addition, specific projects will be led by ad hoc Working Groups.

From the minutes, it is clear that much of the first meeting was taken up with scene- setting with individual members explaining their work in the administrative justice field to the other members of the group.

Two particular themes in the minutes caught my eye:

First, it is clear that there are interesting developments taking place in Scotland and Wales which, following devolution, have the freedom to develop their own approaches – this is particularly the case for Wales.

Second, there was an interesting contribution from the Secretary of the Ombudsman Association, proposing that there should be a workshop bringing together people from the tribunals and ombudsmen worlds to look in some detail at how they approached their work, and to explore ways in which their work could be made more interactive.

Obviously these are early days, but I will be keeping and eye on how the Council develops and the contributions it may make to the development of administrative justice policy and its delivery.

Information about the Administrative Council can be found at https://justice.org.uk/ajc/

This page gives a direct link to the minutes of the meeting.