R v Somerset County Council, ex parte Fewings

Ratio Decidendi

Facts

Somerset County Council owned Over Stowey Customs Common, which it held under statutory powers (s.120(1)(b) of the Local Government Act 1972, empowering the acquisition and management of land 'for the benefit, improvement or development of their area'). A majority of councillors, objecting to deer hunting on moral and animal-welfare grounds, voted to ban the hunting of deer with hounds on the council's land. Members of the local hunt challenged the resolution by judicial review.

Judgment Summary

The Court of Appeal held that the council's ban was unlawful because the council had not directed itself to the correct statutory question. A local authority is not a private landowner free to act as it pleases; it may exercise its powers over its land only for the statutory purpose for which the power is given — here, whether a ban was 'for the benefit, improvement or development of their area' under s.120(1)(b) of the Local Government Act 1972. The majority (Bingham MR and Swinton Thomas LJ) held that the councillors had banned hunting on the basis of their own ethical objections to cruelty rather than by reference to the statutory purpose, and so had taken into account an irrelevant consideration and failed to address the relevant one; the decision was quashed. Laws J, at first instance, had captured the underlying principle that a public body has no private-law freedom of action and holds its powers as duties owed to the public, exercisable only for proper statutory purposes. The case is a classic illustration of the principle of legality and of the distinction between the position of public bodies and private individuals.

Key Quotes

Subsequent Treatment