Associated Provincial Picture Houses v. Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223 (‘Wenesbury Unreasonableness’)
The court here recognised it would only intervene to correct an administrative decision that was considered to be so extreme the courts could correct it – leading to ‘Wednesbury Unreasonableness’ – where the ‘Associated Provincial Picture Houses’ were granted a licence by the defendant local authority to run a cinema so long as no child under 15 was admitted on Sundays and sought a declaration this was beyond the Wednesbury Corporation’s power which failed. The reason for this was later effectively articulated by Lord Diplock’s in Council of Civil Service Unions v. Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374 at p.410 because the administrative decision must be “So outrageous … no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it”.
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