BBL -v- University College London (anonymity order)

Administrative CourtCivilHigh CourtKing's Bench DivisionAnonymity Order

Case number: AC-2024-BHM-000231

In the High Court of Justice
King’s Bench Division
Administrative Court

In the matter of an application for judicial review

28 March 2025

Before:

HHJ Tindal
(Sitting as a Judge of the High Court)

Between:

The King
on the application of
BBL
(by his Litigation Friend, BTH)

-v-

University College London

Order

Notification of the Judge’s decision on the application for permission
After consideration of the documents lodged by the Claimant.

ORDER by HHJ Tindal (Sitting as a Judge of the High Court)

  1. The Claimant is granted anonymity under CPR 39.2(4) and shall be known as ‘BBL’ and the Litigation Friend as BTH. There shall be no publication of the name of the Claimant, the Litigation Friend, any member of their family nor of any information that may lead to their identification. Reporting restrictions apply as to the disclosing of any information that may lead to the subsequent identification of the Claimant. The Defendant or any non- party affected by this paragraph may apply to have it set aside or varied.
  2. The application for permission to claim judicial review is refused.
  3. The application for interim relief is refused.
  4. No order for costs.

Reasons

  1. This is a judicial review dated 18th September 2024 by the Claimant, a disabled student of the Defendant and litigant-in-person challenging:
    “The decisions made by the University’s Academic Services on 31 October 2023, 5 September 2023, 20 June 2024, and 13 August 2024, refusing the Claimant’s requests for extenuating circumstances support for the grant of exclusions/exemptions for two modules, as well as the suspension of regulations required for the Claimant to graduate.”
  2. The Claimant has applied for the appointment of his mother as his Litigation Friend because of the impact on his mental health and pragmatically I am content to appoint her as such.
  3. However, the claim appears misconceived for several reasons:

    3.1 Firstly, whilst the Claimant’s grievances are set out in great detail, he and his Litigation Friend do not identify any clear breaches of legal duty. For the most part, there are simply detailed complaints about various ‘extenuating circumstances’ refusals without identification of how they were unlawful.

    3.2 The only alleged breaches of legal duty are identified at the start – negligence and disability discrimination. But those are actionable in a County Court, not typically by judicial review in the Administrative Court. So, this is the wrong sort of claim.

    3.3 To reinforce that, the relationship between the Claimant and Defendant is contractual and the latter does not appear to be a public authority or exercising public functions under CPR 54.1.

    3.4 The Claimant has alternative remedies with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education as well as the County Court (although the time-limit under the Equality Act 2010 is 6 months, so the Claimant may well be now out of time)

    3.5 The Claimant is certainly out of time to claim judicial review for all the decisions challenged save the 20th June 2024 (for which he arguably did not act ‘promptly’ as required by CPR 54) and 13th August 2024, although it is not clear from the grounds what the challenge to the latter decision actually is.

4. Accordingly, it is unnecessary to direct a response from the Defendant, which cannot therefore recover costs. Likewise, the Claimant’s ancillary applications fall away. However, I do not certify the claim as totally without merit, in case the Claimant and his Litigation Friend can actually identify an arguable breach of public law on reconsideration.

Signed HHJ Tindal