Matthew Howarth, acting for the Secretary of State for the Home Department, successfully applied to strike out a judicial review challenging the revocation of a care provider’s sponsorship licence in R (Oasis Private Care Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWHC 2671 (Admin). The High Court also ordered the claimant to pay £9,000 in costs.
The judgment addresses the circumstances in which a judicial review may be struck out for abuse of process arising from a sustained failure to prosecute, together with non-compliance with procedural requirements. It was submitted that there was no directly reported authority on the test for striking out a judicial review in these circumstances and the Court was invited to give full reasons in a reserved judgment.
The underlying claim challenged the revocation of the claimant’s sponsorship licence following alleged breaches of the sponsor guidance, including the provision of sponsored workers to third parties, a lack of genuine vacancies and failures to pay stipulated salaries. The proceedings had been listed for a rolled-up hearing, but the claimant ceased engaging with the litigation, failed to respond to repeated correspondence and did not attend the hearing.
Mr Andrew Burns KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, accepted that this was not a case of mere delay. The claimant’s prolonged non-participation, failure to prepare its claim for determination and failure to discontinue proceedings which it had no intention of pursuing amounted to an abuse of process under CPR 3.4(2)(b). Its procedural defaults also justified strike-out under CPR 3.4(2)(c).
The Court emphasised that strike-out must remain a last resort, requiring consideration of whether a lesser sanction would suffice. In the exceptional circumstances of this case, no lesser order would serve the overriding objective, and there was no overriding public policy reason to require a full hearing in the claimant’s absence.
The judgment provides a useful application of the strike-out jurisdiction in judicial review proceedings, confirming that a claimant unwilling or unable to pursue its claim must discontinue it or take other steps to avoid wasting the parties’ costs and the Court’s limited resources.
The judgment can be read here.
