![handle is hein.journals/judire26 and id is 1 raw text is: JUDICIAL REVIEW Rutledge
2021, VOL. 26, NO. 1, 1-6
https://doi.org/10.1080/10854681.2021.1940894 Taylor&Francis Group
The Connection Between Policies and Decisions Made Pursuant
to Policies
Kenny Chng
Assistant Professor, Singapore Management University School of Law
Introduction
1. Policies are an indispensable feature of administrative governance. By providing
default guidelines for decision-making, policies streamline the everyday administrative
work of public authorities, helping to manage the gargantuan task of keeping the
machinery of the modern administrative state running smoothly. This article will
analyse an issue in the law regulating the usage of administrative policies that has
received little attention to date - the connection between the unlawfulness of a
policy in itself and the unlawfulness of a decision made pursuant to such a policy.
This article will highlight that there is a degree of analytical ambiguity in this area of
law, and will propose two suggestions to address the issue. By way of methodology,
the article will draw primarily from UK case law. Where relevant, the article will also
refer to material from other common law jurisdictions.
Legal regulation of the usage of administrative policies
2. The bulk of the law regulating administrative policies is concerned with challenges to
decisions made pursuant to a public authority's administrative policies. Indeed, the law
has sought to regulate several different types of administrative decisions relating to
policies: decisions to depart from an existing policy, decisions to change a policy
and adopt a new one, and decisions to adhere to policies. Challenges to each type
of decision have attracted different legal rules. The first two types of decisions have
attracted the application of the legitimate expectations doctrine. In these two types
of situations, a public authority seeks to depart from its existing policy or apply a
new policy to the applicant in question - a decision which the applicant then chal-
lenges in order to get the authority to abide by its existing or previous policy. If a legit-
imate expectation has indeed arisen that an existing or previous policy would be
applied to the claimant, the legitimate expectations doctrine would require the auth-
ority in question to give effect to this expectation unless it is justifiable to frustrate it.1
'For decisions to depart from policy, see The United Policyholders Group and others v The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago
[2016] UKPC 17; R (Save Britain's Heritage) v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2018] EWCA Civ 2137
[39]; R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex p. Khan [1984] 1 WLR 1337. For decisions to change policy, see R v North
and East Devon Health Authority ex p. Coughlan [2001] QB 213; R (Patel) v General Medical Council [2013] EWCA Civ 327;
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/judire26&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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