Court of Appeal rejects application by claimant for permission to appeal to Supreme Court over extension of time for airport expansion challenge

Last month the Court of Appeal decided not to grant Luton and District Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (LADACAN) an extension of time for an appeal over the rejection of a legal challenge to a development consent order (DCO). The DCO allows the expansion of the airport to 32 million passengers a year.

LADACAN subsequently applied for permission to appeal. However, the Court of Appeal refused that application.

It said its reason were: “We respectfully agree with the view of the UKSC, set out in Practice Direction 1 at paragraph 1.31, that on a proper interpretation of Lane v Esdaile [1891] AC 210 the UKSC has no jurisdiction to hear appeals from preliminary decisions of the Court of Appeal in respect of a case in which permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal is not granted.

“We note that the wording used is that permission is ‘not granted’, rather than that permission is ‘refused’; so that even if it were correct that this court had no jurisdiction to refuse permission to appeal having refused an extension of time, the result would still be the same.

“In any event, if the UKSC does have jurisdiction, we are not persuaded that the grounds of appeal against the refusal to extend time raise an arguable point of law of general public importance which ought to be considered by the UKSC.”