Facts: the PCT decided to close a long-stay hospital for incapacitated adults with severe learning disabilities, ultimately, having taken into account ‘home for life’ promises, but having decided that it was in the best interests of those concerned to live in small groups in the community. The claimants brought judicial review proceedings and also best interests proceedings in the Family Division for a declaration as to what their best interests truly were. The PCT sought to stay the best interests proceedings whilst the claimants sought an order that those proceedings and the judicial review should be heard together.

Judgment: Wilson J acceded to the claimants’ application, holding that:

1) The task of the court is to identify the nature and extent of the inquiry which the court is required to conduct in order to despatch the claims in a way that is proper and lawful. It has been already established that where a court accepts that a promise of a home for life has been made such that it can only permit the public authority to close the home if there is an overriding public interest, the question as to whether there is an over- riding public interest is one for the court. This issue needs to be actively resolved rather than measured from a distance.

2) Since the defendant’s justification for closing the hospital and extricating itself from the home for life promise was an assertion that it was in the patients’ best interests, the patients were entitled to challenge that. This is an area of dispute that the court must determine for itself on evidence and that meant almost certainly oral evidence. Any less intrusive inquiry into the validity of the defendant’s assertion as to their best interests would be inadequate.