The 2026 Administrative Court Guide: time limits, urgent applications and AI

Every autumn the Administrative Court publishes a new edition of its Judicial Review Guide, and every autumn most of us file it under "read later". That is a mistake, and this year it is a more expensive mistake than usual.

The 2026 edition landed at the end of September, prepared under Chamberlain J as Judge in Charge and edited by Sheldon and Coppel JJ. It was followed within days by a practice statement on urgent applications that takes effect on 19 October. Between them they touch three areas where local authorities are repeat players: procurement challenges, urgent housing and care applications, and the use of AI in drafting. I will take each in turn, but first a word on why the Guide matters at all.

A guide with teeth

The Guide is careful to say it does not have the force of law. It then spends 259 pages explaining what will happen to you if you ignore it. Paragraph 1.1.3 quotes the Divisional Court in DVP calling it "essential reading for all those who practice in the Administrative Court", and chapter 2 sets out the toolkit: documents refused for being late or in the wrong format, adverse costs, wasted costs against representatives, and referral to the regulator under the Hamid jurisdiction.

Two features of that toolkit are easy to miss from the defendant’s chair. The first is that procedural rigour, in the Guide’s own words, applies "as much to defendant public authorities as to claimants" (paragraph 2.1.3, citing SWP). The second is that the duty of candour is now expressly a permission-stage consideration. The 2025 edition added at paragraph 15.3.3 that the court can take a lack of candour into account when deciding whether to grant permission, and that language survives into 2026. An authority which treats the acknowledgment of service as a holding exercise is handing the claimant an argument.

There is also a new and quietly significant line at paragraph 6.2.8. When responding to a pre-action letter, the defendant "should give careful consideration to the merits of its legal position, and to whether alternative dispute resolution would be appropriate". The footnote cites LLJ v Hackney, decided this year. The standard template response that says nothing and concedes nothing has just become harder to defend on costs.

Procurement challenges: the three-month longstop is less absolute than you thought

This is the part of the Guide that most directly affects councils as contracting authorities, and the 2026 text has changed in ways that favour challengers.

The background is familiar. A supplier who wants to challenge a procurement decision under the Procurement Act 2023 has 30 days from the date it knew or ought to have known of the grounds, under section 106. The court can extend that for good reason, but section 106(4) caps any extension at three months. That is the regime in the Technology and Construction Court, and it is why so many procurement disputes die at the limitation stage.

The 2025 Guide said much the same about judicial review. Paragraph 6.4.3.3 described the 30 day period and the three month ceiling together, and paragraph 6.4.4.5 went further, stating flatly that in public contract cases extensions of time cannot be granted.

Both statements have gone. The new paragraph 6.4.4.5 reserves the no-extension rule for planning cases. The new footnote to paragraph 6.4.3.3 explains why: CPR 54.5(6A) adopts the 30 day period from section 106 but, in the Guide’s words, the CPR "do not incorporate the restriction under section 106(4)". On that reading, the Administrative Court’s power to extend time in a procurement judicial review is the ordinary one under CPR 3.1(2)(a), weighed against the usual factors at paragraph 6.4.4.2, and not the capped power that governs a Part 7 claim in the TCC.

The Guide also tidies up the position for legacy procurements. Procedures started before 24 February 2025 remain under the old regulations. Decisions under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 keep the short limit through CPR 54.5(6). Decisions under the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016 and the Concession Contracts Regulations 2016 are now described as subject to the standard judicial review time limit, which is a change from last year’s text.

Two further sentences deserve attention. Paragraph 6.4.3.3 now accepts that there are "certain circumstances in which judicial review may be appropriate as well as or instead of a TCC claim", and it now expressly records that the Act also governs "decisions of public bodies/utilities taken in the management of such contracts". Paragraph 6.3.3.3 adds that disputes may arise over whether an alternative remedy is adequate "in light of the procedural rules which apply to it, in particular the remedies which can be obtained".

What does this mean in practice? Not that a supplier can ignore the statutory clock and wander into the Administrative Court instead. The alternative remedy principle is still there, judicial review is still a remedy of last resort, and a claimant seeking an extension still has to justify it. It does mean that an authority which has been telling a disappointed bidder "you are out of time, go away" should check which court the bidder is heading for before repeating the line. It also means that in a contract management dispute, where the TCC route is less obviously available, the public law route is a live option the Guide now expressly recognises. The sequencing rules for parallel claims at paragraph 6.7 are unchanged and remain a trap for anyone who issues in both courts without following them.

Urgent applications: from 19 October the form is all the judge will read when deciding urgency

Local authorities are on the receiving end of a large share of the Administrative Court’s urgent work: homelessness, interim accommodation, community care, children’s services, school transport. The practice statement issued by Chamberlain J on 30 September changes how those applications are triaged.

The statement records that applications for urgent consideration have been increasing substantially and are straining the court’s resources. It requires strict compliance with chapter 17 of the Guide. Then comes the operative sentence: from 19 October 2026, decisions on whether urgent consideration is justified will be taken using the information on Form N463 alone and without reference to any other document. If the form does not justify urgency, urgent consideration will be refused. Applications not in the proper form, or without the documents listed at paragraph 17.4 (claim form, supporting documents, relevant correspondence and a draft order), may not be forwarded to the immediates judge at all.

The statement quotes DVP for the proposition that reasons for urgency should be capable of short explanation and should fit in the box. Leaving sections blank or cross-referring to the bundle is "not acceptable".

For claimant practitioners this is a discipline. For authorities it is an opportunity, and a different kind of risk. The opportunity is that a sloppy N463 will now fail on its own, without the authority having to say anything. The risk is that at the triage stage there is no opportunity to answer the claimant’s account at all: the decision whether urgent consideration is justified will be made from the form alone. Relevant correspondence must still accompany the application under paragraph 17.4, and it may matter once the application moves beyond the initial urgency decision to interim relief or directions. An authority which expects urgent proceedings should write its pre-action correspondence with that later judicial audience in mind.

The duty of candour bites hardest here. Paragraph 2.1.3.2 singles out urgent applications as the moment to comply "rigorously", and chapter 18 reserves the Hamid jurisdiction specifically for abuse of the urgent procedure. That part of chapter 18 is principally concerned with abuse by applicants and their representatives. The defendant is nonetheless under its own stringent duty of candour: an authority responding to an urgent application cannot safely omit an inconvenient file note.

AI: three paragraphs that could cost you a career

The 2025 edition tucked a warning about AI into the chapter on skeleton arguments. The 2026 edition promotes it to its own section, 2.3, in the chapter on procedural rigour. The content is short. Those using AI tools to draft pleadings, witness statements and skeletons must take reasonable care, particularly over the accuracy of citations and the propositions of law drawn from them. The Guide adds, with some understatement, that "AI chatbots may well be prone to error". Failure to take reasonable care may result in costs sanctions, strike out, referral to a regulator, contempt proceedings or referral to the police. AI does not excuse breaching page limits.

The footnote cites Ayinde v Haringey, which is the reason local authority lawyers should read this section twice. The case was a homelessness judicial review. Five of the authorities cited in the claimant’s grounds did not exist. It was Haringey’s case handler who could not find them and wrote to ask. The claimant’s solicitors described the errors as "cosmetic". Ritchie J made wasted costs orders and sent the transcript to the regulators, and the Divisional Court under Sharp P then used the case to set out what the sanctions for fictitious citations can be, including contempt.

The lesson is not only "do not let your trainees use ChatGPT for the skeleton". It is that the defendant who checks the other side’s citations is doing the court a service and will be thanked for it, while the defendant who waves through an opponent’s grounds without reading the authorities has missed the easiest win available.

Three things to do this week

Check the limitation lines in your current procurement correspondence against the new paragraph 6.4.3.3 and its footnote. Make sure your housing and social care teams know that from 19 October the N463 is the whole case for the initial urgency decision, and that your pre-action letters will travel with it. Put a citation check on the defence side of every judicial review, however routine.

The Guide is free, hyperlinked and 259 pages long. The parts that matter to a council legal department are perhaps twenty of them. Read those twenty before someone else reads them to you. As at the time of writing, it is accessible at https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/the-administrative-court-judicial-review-guide-2026/.

Paul Henty is a partner at Beale & Co and Head of Public Procurement. He acts for contracting authorities and suppliers in procurement challenges and related public law proceedings. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..