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We are pleased to present Leading Planning Cases, a new printed service from the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting designed to assist the Planning Court and all of its users by consolidating cases that are frequently cited in planning claims into a single convenient volume. It is anticipated that planning practitioners will be encouraged to make use of Leading Planning Cases in the Planning Court as of 2 January 2020.

Richard Ground QC of Cornerstone Chambers, who collaborated with ICLR in the development of Leading Planning Cases, explains:

“We have sought, with the assistance of planning judges and many members of the Planning and Environment Bar Association, to identify comprehensively the leading authorities that are most frequently cited in planning cases.”

In total twenty-five cases were identified, spanning from Cooke J’s decision in Stringer v Minister of Housing and Local Government [1970] 1 WLR 1281 through to the Supreme Court’s recent judgment in Lambeth London Borough Council v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2019] UKSC 33; [2019] 1 WLR 4317.

“This book gathers together the key cases which are referred to frequently in the Planning Court. Arrangements have been made so that judges hearing cases in the Planning Court will normally have access to the book, so that these cases will not need to be copied into bundles of authorities. Use of this book will also ensure that the court has cited to it the preferred reports of these cases, in accordance with Practice Direction (Citation of Authorities) [2012] 1 WLR 780.”

The Hon Mr Justice Holgate, President of the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) and Planning Liaison Judge

Cases include:

• Stringer v Minister of Housing and Local Government [1970] 1 WLR 1281
• Westminster City Council v Great Portland Estates plc [1985] AC 661
• South Lakeland District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment [1992] 2 AC 141
• Tesco Stores Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment [1995] 1 WLR 759
• City of Edinburgh Council v Secretary of State for Scotland [1997] 1 WLR 1447
• South Bucks District Council v Porter (No 2) [2004] 1 WLR 1953
• Tesco Stores Ltd v Dundee City Council (Asda Stores Ltd intervening) [2012] PTSR 983
• BDW Trading Ltd Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2017] PTSR 1337
• Hopkins Homes Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2017] 1 WLR 1865
• R (CPRE Kent) v Dover District Council [2018] 1 WLR 108
• Lambeth London Borough Council v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2019] 1 WLR 4317

Click here to view the full list of cases included in the volume.

Who is this book for?

Leading Planning Cases is likely to be of value to anyone with an interest in planning law and was specifically designed for use by planning law practitioners when in court.

How the book is to be used

The Planning Court is taking steps to ensure that all judges in the Planning Court have access to a copy of the book, in the expectation that, from 1 January 2020, it will become a standard reference work which reduces the need for repeated, one-use-only photocopying of judgments for inclusion in the bundles of authorities in individual cases. It will also ensure that the court has cited to it the preferred reports of these cases, in accordance with Practice Direction (Citation of Authorities) [2012] 1 WLR 780.

It is not yet known whether the Planning Court will issue specific guidance on how the book should be used. In the meantime, however, Mr Justice Holgate has indicated that:

• An advocate leaving authorities out of bundles will need to make sure that opponents appreciate that the book is being relied upon.
• An advocate should make it clear in his or her skeleton that the book will be cited and should give the usual citation references for the cases plus the relevant internal pagination within the ICLR book.
• An advocate will also need to think about supplying copies of the authorities to a litigant in person. Alternatively, the advocate could lend a copy of the book to that party.

How to buy your copy of Leading Planning Cases

Leading Planning Cases is now available for purchase directly from ICLR for £95 or £90 for orders of ten or more copies.

To obtain a copy of Leading Planning Cases from ICLR directly:

• Call us on 0207 242 6471 (8:30am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday)
• Email us on enquiries@iclr.co.uk 
• Visit us at 119 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1PP

A printed index and digest of case names, subject matter, and judicial considerations of other cases and legislation.

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Also known as the “Red Index,” The Consolidated Index to Leading Law Reports was a unique research tool and an indispensable work of reference. It enabled the practitioner, student or librarian to find, at a glance, any case reported in one of the leading series of law reports during a particular period. All important cases, from 1951 to 2020, may be quickly and easily found by reference to their names, subject matter or by reference to cases or legislation cited in them. (Earlier cases were indexed in the cumulative and consolidated Digest of Cases, which appeared in a series of multi-volume editions from 1865 until 1950.)

As well as the ICLR’s own publications, the nine volumes of the Consolidated Index cover cases reported in a number of other leading series of reports, including the All England Law Reports; All England Commercial Cases; All England European Cases; the Criminal Appeal Reports; Lloyd’s Law Reports; the Local Government Reports; the Road Traffic Reports; and Tax Cases. More recent volumes have added Butterworths Company Law Cases; the Family Law Reports; and Simon’s Tax Cases.

Each volume of the Consolidated Index is divided into the following indexes.

Cases Reported

This lists in alphabetical order all the cases reported in the indexed series, together with all their citations and relevant court abbreviations.

Alternative case names are cross-referenced to the main entry, as are ships’ names where relevant.

Subject Matter

Cases are listed according to their subject matter under three levels of headings followed by relevant catchwords, enabling the user to find all the cases relating to a particular topic in the same place. The subject matter headings contain comprehensive cross-references.

Additional sections list commonly used words and phrases which have been considered by the court as part of the subject matter of the case and ships’ names.

Cases Judicially Considered

This lists any earlier cases considered (applied, distinguished, overruled etc) by the court in any of the cases indexed in the current volume. This section also lists the “appellate history” of the indexed cases, ie where lower court decisions have been affirmed, reversed or varied by the decision of a higher court.

The table of Cases Judicially Considered is not limited to decisions mentioned in the headnotes of the reports and includes cases judicially considered in all cases indexed in the tables of Cases Reported and Subject Matter.

Legislation Considered

Any legislative or other commonly used wordings which have been considered by the court in cases reported in ICLR’s own series are also listed under the following headings:

• Statutes
• Statutory Instruments
• Standard forms of contract
• European Union enactments
• Overseas enactments
• International Convention

Purchase the Index

Bound volumes of the Consolidated Index are available for each of the decades 1951-60; 1961-70; 1971-80; 1981-90 and 1991-2000, and for the half-decades 2001-05; 2006-10; 2011-15; and 2015-2020.

Please note that no further volumes of the Consolidated Index are planned. All the information in the Consolidated Indexes is now available online via ICLR.4 along with a good deal of additional content.

For guidance, see: How do I find Consolidated Index information online?

For missing volumes of the print edition please contact the ICLR bookshop or email: enquiries@iclr.co.uk 

Creating case history for over 150 years.

The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR) was founded in 1865, by the Inns of Court and the Law Society, on the recommendation of a committee of lawyers who were fed up with the erratic and disorganised way in which critical precedents were then being recorded. From the start, it has been “making case history” by recording for posterity those cases which have changed or clarified the law, or were for certain reasons “peculiarly instructive.”

This book, published to mark the ICLR’s 150th anniversary, collects together for the first time the top 15 cases published in The Law Reports, as voted for by readers on this website, and discussed by Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, President of the Supreme Court, in a speech given at the launch on 6 October 2015.

They include such favourites as the one about the Carbolic Smoke Ball, the one about the Snail in the Ginger Beer, and the case that gave rise to the mysterious legal concept of “Wednesbury unreasonableness”.

On a more serious note, the cases demonstrate how the relationship between the judiciary and the government has changed over time, with judges now much more likely (as in the so-called “Belmarsh case” of 2004) to defy the attempts of a home secretary to detain foreigners of hostile intent without trial, than they were in World War II when it was the lone dissenting voice of Lord Atkin who declared that “the judges are no respecters of persons and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive.”

Among the other cases selected by ICLR’s readers are key decisions on a company’s “veil of incorporation” as a separate legal person, the “golden thread” of the presumption of innocence in criminal law, the creation (by one Denning J) of the doctrine of promissory estoppel, the reversal of the marital rape exemption, the surgical separation of conjoined twins, and the rule permitting resort to Parliamentary papers to resolve statutory ambiguity.

Introducing the cases are a series of essays by ICLR editors and by two external contributors, Guy Holborn, Librarian of Lincoln’s Inn and Professor Paul Mitchell, of UCL. In his foreword, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd CJ says:

“The cases in this anniversary volume illustrate not only the significant contribution that law reporting of the highest quality has made to the development of the common law, but how the common law has incrementally developed over the past 150 years.”

The Law Reports 1865 – 2015 Anniversary Edition

Edited by Paul Magrath

ISBN 978-0-85289-314-2

Price £30
To purchase this book please visit our shop, call Customer Services on 020 7242 6471 or contact us.

At the start of a new millennium in 2001, the ICLR published a Special Issue to mark the relaunch of The Law Reports and the Weekly Law Reports in a new typeface and format for the 21st Century, and to celebrate the achievements of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting in the 135 years since its establishment in the 19th.

With an introduction summarising the history of law reporting up to and since the creation of the Council in 1865, the Special Issue contains the ten most significant cases selected by its reporters. Enormously popular, it went through four editions before being effectively replaced by the sesquicentennial Anniversary Edition of 2015, as shown above.

Among the ten cases chosen by the reporters for this issue were some of those ultimately selected by readers for the anniversary volume, but at least one of the most interesting – Regina v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 – the one about the shipwrecked sailors who ate the cabin boy, and unsuccessfully pleaded necessity to a charge of murder – was not.

Produced by Paul Magrath and Nicholas Mercer, with a Foreword by Robert Williams, Editor of the Law Reports.

Published in 2001, fourth reprint 2007.

A few copies of this may be available to personal callers at our shop. But you can read it in PDF online.