Keir Starmer is reportedly becoming more and more frustrated at the sluggish reality of government within the current system. Who can blame him? Government is beset by a sclerotic Civil Service and continuous legal battles, while the minds of ministers are full of the same Westminster-bubble preoccupations that have now led to a cratering in public opinion for both of Britain’s two main parties. As things stand, the incentives for that bubble, our Civil Service and our lawyers are all far removed from delivering on voters’ priorities – or even for the government of the day. Nowhere is this clearer than in judicial review and its effects on planning.
The concept of judicial review is simple: actions by ministers, departments, government or local authority bodies can be reviewed by courts to ensure they are rational, legal and that they followed the right procedure. These grounds are constructed to guard against individuals or departments acting outside of their power – to prevent overreach and to stop truly mad or corrupt decisions. What this has led to in recent years – especially with the growing reach of the Human Rights Act and the ECHR – has been utterly devastating for Britain.
The effect of judicial review is wide ranging and hidden from the public: to take a brief example close to myself. The Bully XL was banned in 2023, becoming law in January 2024, through the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. This Act gives the relevant minister the power to add a dangerous breed to the banned list, if the minister considers it justified. It is an extremely broad power. The only determination is the minister’s view – this is written to be very clear to courts: the minister decides, not you nor anyone else.
Despite this, and despite the Bully XL being behind the majority of deaths caused by dogs for three years running – and responsible for the highest increase in deaths caused by dogs ever recorded in Britain – a series of judicial reviews were immediately launched claiming the decision wasn’t rational, that it wasn’t legal, that it failed to produce an equality assessment and so on. These reviews cost over a quarter of a million pounds, and were not resolved until 2025 (in favour of the continued ban). In other words, even with an extremely wide ranging power, exercised by the minister under well publicised reasons, judicial review still piles on costs and dissuades governments from acting – indeed, I was told that the government was expressly concerned about judicial review so dragged their feet – allowing more people to die. This is what our system does.
In planning, the effects are widespread and dramatic. Judicial review has led to delay after delay as projects fight multiple legal battles, sometimes on extremely similar grounds. Projects increase in cost as armies of lawyers are hired to write thousands of pages to avoid as many challenges as possible, all for other armies of lawyers to pore over to find holes for yet more legal challenges. There is a reason, after all, that a road can cost £1.2 billion without a single spade in the ground. The suffering this causes reinforces itself as well. The more challenges, the more delays; the more delays, the more costs; the more costs, the more uncertainty – and the fewer companies who want to invest, as the timelines, expense and outcomes become ever more unclear. People die on unsafe roads, energy prices continue to skyrocket, life gets worse in Britain.
Labour’s current planning bill has been beset by other problems too: chief of them being a desire to streamline rather than replace the current system, and giving into the same degrowth voices when the bill entered the House of Lords. The bill is now watered down to the extent that it will not speed up projects enough for the radical change that voters are demanding, nor for Labour itself to benefit from. It seems that Starmer, realising that this will not deliver the rapid economic change that Labour made a flagship promise, has instructed officials to pitch ideas for a second bill.
It is rather embarrassing that this is how little our leaders planned for government, but it is a renewed opportunity to fight the chief elements of our system that are destroying Britain’s potential. Chief among them is judicial review, something that Reeves is reportedly looking at in this second planning bill. This will be their second attempt at judicial review changes, but we can hope that this time they’ve realised radical change is required.
Indeed, it is worth stating how remarkable it is that Starmer’s Government is focusing – again – on judicial review, and what this signals. Starmer has always presented himself as a man of procedure, of the judiciary. He is a man of law, courts and process. However, the reality of government in Britain in 2025 is such that someone of this description can find himself as Prime Minister, with a team of ministers described by civil servants as ‘adults are back in charge‘, and nevertheless hit so many road blocks that he resorts to making public his frustrations and talks of reforming the very process and procedure he would normally champion (though it is unclear if Labour will undertake the radical changes necessary, or if this is yet more vacuous ‘comms’).
That we have gotten to this state is all the more tragic as Britain does not have a codified constitution that places judicial review above Parliament. Indeed, Parliament is so powerful it is free to write laws that are exempt from any oversight of any court whatsoever. When ministers complain about judicial review, they are complaining about a problem they have the power to solve. They can make radical changes. The Westminster bubble will not like it, the lawyers will not be happy, the Civil Service will resist, but we may, as a result, be able to build a railway without facing a new judicial review every week, or to make decisions without fearing the reaction of the lawyers of the vegetable lobby, ready to throw hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ money to causes designed to delay vital projects across the country.
In another life, I spent years researching English legal constitutional history. The balance of power is important – the ability to call leaders to account is vital. Without it, much evil can flourish. However, power is not simply held by politicians – there are many institutions that can exert power, and that can do so to the detriment of all of us. The balance must be redressed, otherwise Britain will continue to stagnate and only the lawyers will win.
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