32. I have not found it easy to reach a decision on this issue. The lack of clarity in the Council’s internal documentation (see eg the description of the proposal in the report to Cabinet on 11 March 2014, quoted at paragraph 9 above) seems to have been carried over into the documentation prepared for the consultation. The consultation material presented an incomplete picture by concentrating on the proposed assessment of users of the PTU services to see if alternative transport options could be used, without a clear statement that it was proposed to close the PTU itself. In consequence, Mr Wise’s submission that the Council failed to consult on the closure proposal and/or that the consultation material was misleading has considerable attraction to it. In the end, however, I have reached the conclusion that that is too formalistic an analysis and that the judge was right to concentrate on the proposed change of approach to transport arrangements for existing users and to find that the consultation process as a whole was not unfair.

33. What was important for users and their carers was not the continued existence of the PTU as such – as I have said in the context of the assessment issue, it was possible to provide the same service by other means – but the type of transport arrangements made in their case. They can have been left in no doubt that the purpose of the proposed assessments was to see if the existing service through the PTU could be replaced in each individual case by alternative arrangements. It was implicit that the PTU service would be withdrawn from those who were assessed as able to use alternative modes of transport. The reality of all this was brought home by the information that almost one half of users of the existing service were already being helped to get alternative transport to meet their needs.

34. In order to determine whether consultees were misled or were not consulted about the actual proposal, it is also necessary to have regard to the wider picture. In my view the judge was entitled to find that Mr Clemmett’s witness statement was ‘not sufficient to establish that those who conducted the personal visits to make the assessments were specifically tasked with making it clear to the users and their carers that the proposal would involve the closure of the PTU …’. That finding did not involve the rejection of Mr Clemmett’s evidence, which was unchallenged. It was simply a finding that his evidence was insufficiently detailed and specific to make good such a conclusion. Mr Clemmett’s evidence taken as a whole (including the exhibited slides and media articles) does, however, provide some support for the view that consultees were aware that the proposal included closure of the PTU. The absence of any substantial evidence on behalf of the appellants that consultees were in fact misled is also highly material.

35. In Moseley the consultation material conveyed a positively misleading impression that other options were irrelevant. There is nothing equivalent to that in this case. In Moseley it was wrong to place reliance on consultees’ assumed knowledge of other options for the same reason, that the message conveyed by the local authority was that other options were irrelevant. Again there is no equivalent in this case, and in my view it was open to the judge to make the finding he did that any sensible reader of the consultation booklet would have understood that the proposal involved the withdrawal of the PTU service from those who were assessed as able to use alternative transport arrangements. More generally, there is nothing in Moseley to cast doubt on the correctness of the legal principles by reference to which the judge directed himself in this case. The judge’s conclusion on the fundamental question, that the consultation was fair, was in my view a proper one for him to reach.