Failure to serve sealed claim in compliance with rules “fatal” to planning statutory review claim, judge rules

Fordham J said in his conclusions: “This is an area of undoubted strictness. There can be an integrity in the law promoting certainty.

“Yes, the court has powers to retrospectively validate, and to extend time. But they arise in a disciplined arena, where the rules and compliance with them really matter…I have been left in no doubt that the present case is one where the failure to serve a sealed claim, in compliance with the rules, and within the prescribed deadline, is fatal.”

The case was brought by Valentine London against the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and South Hams District Council.

Deputy High Court Judge Marcus Pilgerstorfer KC had earlier decided to allow the Secretary of State's application to set aside the claim for planning statutory review, as it was not validly served within the time prescribed.

He refused Valentine London’s application for an extension of time for service and the claimant then applied to discharge that order, which the Secretary of State resisted.

In June 2025 a planning inspector rejected Valentine London’s appeal against a ‘principal home’ planning condition, imposed by South Hams for four residential flats in Devon.

The court heard that Valentine London's director made a mistake in using a planning judicial review claim form instead of one for a planning statutory review.

Court staff pointed out the error but he initially maintained judicial review was appropriate, but later decided to refile the papers as a planning statutory review.

When the director filed the claim he named the Secretary of State as defendant and wrote in ‘2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF’ as the address leaving blank the ‘phone number’ and ‘email’ boxes.

Fordham J said the central point in the case was that the director “inexcusably failed, between 15:19 on Monday 28 July 2025 and midnight that night, and indeed at all stages after that, to serve the sealed claim form N208PC on the [required] NP@GLD email address”.

He said this was not a question of simple default but was because the director’s own letter before claim dated 17 July 2025 recorded that the Secretary of State's address for service was the NP@GLD email address.

Secondly, he had been sent “a very clear explanation that the Secretary of State's address for service was the NP@GLD email address.

“In my judgment, this fact – even if it stood alone – would be fatal,” the judge said.

Fordham J said the director plainly knew about the NP@GLD email address because he typed it out and used it when he was sending his email at 14:30 on Friday 25 July 2025, attaching the unsealed judicial review claim form, and he also typed it out when he was filling out the form N463PC.

The judge said the director had been prompted about the NP@GLD email address by the court, when it sent him the sealed planning statutory review claim form at 15:19 on Monday 28 July 2025, "prominently in the main body of the court's email, but also in the box which the court filled out within the sealed claim form itself".

Fordham J turned to whether it would be appropriate to exercise the CPR 6.15 power of retrospective validation to the act of posting the sealed planning statutory review claim bundle to the department's Marsham Street address.

Valentine London's director said the act of posting took place before the service deadline, but this was not to the correct postal address, which should have been that of the Government Legal Department.

Fordham J said: “I am unable to accept that there is good reason to treat the posting to the Marsham Street postal address as ‘good service’ under CPR 6.15. That would be the case, even if I were satisfied – which I am not – that the act of posting had taken place on the evening of Monday 28 July 2025.”

He said providing a sealed claim form to the wrong person or place is a method of service which the court can, in principle, authorise as ‘good service’.

However, Fordham J said it was, in his judgment, inexcusable in the circumstances of the present case for the director to have served the sealed claim form by post to an incorrect postal address.

“The claimant's letter before claim was written to the correct postal address for the Secretary of State, which was set out on the first page. The court's email confirming that the claim had been issued gave the correct postal address for the Secretary of State which [the director] simply ignored.”

Mark Smulian