Comments from stakeholders and partners of the AJTC at our launch
James Sandbach, Social Policy Officer at Citizens Advice
The Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council is a vital part of our public service and public policy infrastructure. It will act as a forum to spread good practice in decision-making, case management and tribunal adjudication; above all the body has a unique opportunity to communicate users' views to the Tribunals Service, and to feedback tribunal decisions into the development of public policy.
We look forward to working with AJTC and bringing CAB experience of the tribunal system into these discussions. For many of our clients, the tribunals system offers their best hope of obtaining justice and impartial adjudication where administrative decisions go wrong. We would particularly like the AJTC to focus on what support tribunal users need to get the best out of the tribunal system.
Link: Citizens Advice
Caroline Sheppard
Chief Adjudicator, National Parking Adjudication Service
The Tribunals that are not in the Tribunals Service welcome the transformation of the Council on Tribunals (CoT) into the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council (AJTC). The AJTC will prove a valuable organisation for the whole Tribunal community being able to build on the excellent work of the former CoT in creating a broad church of administrative justice.
There are a significant number of tribunals that are not in the Tribunals Service whose identity and purpose will need to be promoted. While there are practical advantages in the ‘other’ Tribunals being taken under the wing of the Tribunals Service, where the economies of scale and nationwide facilities can be shared and will benefit from additional usage, the bespoke services and specialities of the individual smaller Tribunals need to be preserved and can be championed by the AJTC.
In particular smaller tribunals outside the Tribunals Service have an opportunity to develop new initiatives in a wide range of different circumstances. The ability for those tribunals to tailor their services to their users is a fundamental cornerstone of their jurisdiction. For example The National Parking Adjudication Service (soon to become the Traffic Penalty Tribunal) enables motorist appellants to choose where their appeal will be heard from the 60 venues, rather than put them off appealing by requiring them to return to the place where the parking ticket was issued. This is a valuable service in our jurisdiction, which might not be necessary in another jurisdiction, or fit well with the regionally based plans of the burgeoning Tribunals Service. Another example is the Agricultural Land Tribunal for whom it is fundamental to hold hearings on or near the land subject to the case.
A further role of the AJTC might be able to have a greater involvement in the drafting of procedural regulations for the tribunals outside the Tribunals Service. The awareness within the different government and local authority departments of the new thinking in administrative justice is at best variable, and smaller jurisdictions do not have the benefit of the Tribunals Service judicial committees to oversee procedural regulations. This is an important area where the AJTC could develop the initiative begun by the CoT in publishing model rules into practical advice and formal involvement when new regulations are proposed and drafted.
Another opportunity for the AJTC is to promote wider public understanding of tribunals and administrative justice generally and the varied nature of their work. It is little known by the public, and even within the legal profession, that tribunals deal with so many cases each year. The Tribunals Service itself may not consider that it is its role to promote general public awareness administrative justice within society, but the AJTC is in an ideal position to do so.
As part of the objective to raise awareness the AJTC could also lead initiatives whereby young lawyers, and students studying law, can recognise the work of Tribunals and the whole tribunal world with a view to encouraging them to focus their future careers towards tribunal work. There are many enthusiastic young lawyers who abandon a legal career because of their distaste for the financial emphasis and pressure of commercial law. Given the strength of the new Tribunals Service and the move towards “cross-ticketing” young lawyers could be encouraged to focus their career towards a tribunal appointment. This would enrich the recruitment pool and emphasise the worth and satisfaction of a judicial career.
The AJTC in its new form will be well placed to spearhead a wide range of forward thinking initiatives to develop the role and understanding of administrative justice.
Link: NPAS
Steve Hynes
Director, Legal Action Group
The Legal Action Group (LAG) is a charity that through its publishing and training services plays an important role in increasing lawyers and advisors knowledge of the law. It also carries out policy and campaigning work mainly focused on publicly funded legal services, advocating for the voice of the end user to be heard.
LAG is particularly concerned about the impact of tribunals in ensuring access to justice for poor and marginalised communities. We recognise that tribunals play an important part in enabling people to challenge unjust administrative decisions and to seek redress if they have suffered an injustice. The Tribunals Service has been set some ambitious efficiency targets which it will need to achieve while improving services to tribunal users. LAG would argue that the priority for the AJTC will be to ensure that tribunals are fair, accessible and respond to the needs of users.
AJTC recognises the importance of putting the needs of users at the centre of its services. LAG will be interested in working with the AJTC to examine ways in which we can engage with service users to ensure this.
Link: Legal Action Group
Tony Redmond
Chair of the British and Irish Ombudsman Association
The creation of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council (AJTC) is a welcome development in bringing even greater coherence in the development and management of the administrative justice landscape. BIOA recognises and supports the important relationship between Ombudsmen and the Council on Tribunals over many years and the AJTC is a culmination of these efforts to forge close and effective links.
Importantly, it is yet another example of BIOA and the new AJTC seeking the opportunity to offer those who seek alternative dispute resolution and / or administrative justice a clearer understanding of the body most relevant to their needs. The mapping exercise to highlight all ADR bodies (a joint BIOA / COT initiative to map the complaint handling landscape, including Ombudsmen) is an example of such closer working. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this new body is the increased scope for Ombudsmen and Tribunals to share knowledge, experience and good practice which will in turn be of benefit to all who wish to use our services.
BIOA looks forward to developing a close working relationship with the AJTC as it emerges from its transitional period of development.
Link: BIOA
Margaret Harrison-Smith and Jillian Segal
Australian Administrative Review Council
The Administrative Review Council (ARC) is delighted to have been invited to contribute to this special launch edition of Adjust. We would like to commence by congratulating the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council (AJTC) on its establishment on 1 November 2007. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the new Council.
Past influences
The thirtieth anniversary last year of the ARC prompted us to look forward at future challenges for administrative law, and also back, at the ARC’s origins and the prevailing influences at the time of its establishment.
In looking back, we turned inevitably, to the Administrative Review Committee, chaired by the Hon Mr Justice John Kerr CMG, and for that reason, often referred to as the Kerr Committee. The terms of reference provided in 1971 to the Kerr Committee by the Australian Government of the day included:
To consider the desirability of introducing legislation along the lines of the United Kingdom Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1958.
The Committee’s subsequent consideration of that legislation is clearly reflected in its recommendation for the introduction of a permanent administrative review council with functions similar although broader in certain respects than those of the UK Council on Tribunals.
Since the inception of the ARC in 1976, our two Council’s have enjoyed a close and productive relationship. We were delighted that Lord Newton, then Chair of the Council on Tribunals and now Chair of the AJTC, was able to attend and to speak at our 30th anniversary seminar.
At the seminar Lord Newton remarked that:
It may be going too far to say that the British Council on Tribunals and the Australian Administrative Review Council are sister organisations, but they certainly have a lot in common…’.
and that:
…although the two organisations have somewhat different remits – reflecting the different contexts in which they arose – there is undoubtedly a commonality of spirit in their approach to their work.
We very much agree with these perceptions.
Other synergies
The history of both Councils has also converged in other ways. Both have been subject to external review, the ARC by a parliamentary committee in 1997, and the Council on Tribunals most recently, in 2001, as part of the extensive Review of Tribunals undertaken by Sir Andrew Leggatt.
It is testament to the value placed on the work of both Councils that the outcome of these reviews was an expansion rather than a contraction of their respective powers and functions. Consistent with the findings of the parliamentary inquiry, the legislative amendments to the ARC’s functions under the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Act 1975 (Cth) that followed the review confirmed our role of keeping administrative law under review. The review also clarified our role in assessing the adequacy of the procedures used by primary decision makers, as well as tribunals and other bodies engaged in the review of administrative decisions.
Similarly, the outcome of the Leggatt report, which saw the Council on Tribunals as the ‘hub of the wheel of administrative justice’, was the evolution of the Council into the AJTC with a wider remit, to ‘review the relationships between the various components of the system (in particular ombudsmen, tribunals and the courts)’ in order to ensure that the system as a whole satisfactorily reflects the needs of users.
The Leggatt report expressed the hope that, in the longer term, the Council on Tribunals: like the Administrative Review Council in Australia … should be made responsible for upholding the system of administrative justice and keeping it under review, for monitoring developments in administrative law, and for making recommendations to the Lord Chancellor about improvements that might be made to the system.
In terms of influence, one Council on the other, it could therefore be said that history has in a sense come full circle.
Congratulations once again. We look forward to maintaining the close ties with you that we have enjoyed in the past with your predecessor, the Council on Tribunals.
Link: Administrative Review Council (Australia)