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Mr Justice Chamberlain has criticised the Secretary of State for Defence and his representatives for repeatedly failing to warn the other parties of missed deadlines in three linked judicial review claims concerning Afghan nationals seeking relocation to the UK. He described the defendant’s application of 29 September 2026 to extend time as “a textbook example of bad litigation practice”.
In a judgment handed down on 9 October 2026, [2026] EWHC 2571 (Admin), the judge set out his reasons for orders made at a hearing on 2 October 2026 on the defendant’s application to extend time for filing documents. He found that the Secretary of State and his representatives had repeatedly failed to give notice to the other parties of their inability or unwillingness to comply with directions until after the relevant deadline had passed, and had applied for extensions supported by what the judge called exiguous and unspecific reasons on form N244, with no accompanying witness statement.
Key points
- The claims challenge decisions of the Secretary of State for Defence relating to Afghan nationals seeking relocation to the UK. The judge said they were test cases, raising issues likely to be relevant to others in a similar position.
- The hearing had been listed, under orders of Mould J, to begin with a reading day on 12 October 2026, with the substantive hearing referred to in the judgment as listed for 13 October 2026.
- The defendant made many applications for extensions of time, many of them after the relevant deadline had expired. The last, filed after 4pm on 29 September 2026, sought more time for evidence due that day and for documents some of which had been due on 25 September 2026.
- The judge described that application as “a textbook example of bad litigation practice”: it was made after the deadline, with less than two weeks to go before the hearing, and without prior warning sought to cut in half the time the claimants’ representatives had to consider and respond to the documents.
- Mr Justice Chamberlain ordered the defendant to pay the claimants’ costs occasioned by its applications to extend time since 6 August 2026, of the hearings on 2 and 9 October 2026, and attributable to the adjournment of the hearing fixed for 13 October 2026, to be assessed on the indemnity basis if not agreed.
- Any further application by the defendant to vary the directions set on 9 October 2026 that is not agreed by all parties must be accompanied by a witness statement from a lawyer with conduct of the litigation, giving the name and position of the person in the client department or the Government Legal Department who decided to apply for an extension and confirming that this person has read the judgment.
What happened
The judgment records a chronology of extension applications made by the Government Legal Department (GLD) for the Secretary of State. An order of Mould J approved on 6 August 2026 set a series of deadlines, including for disclosure by 14 August 2026 and for skeleton arguments and evidence in September 2026. On 14 August 2026, after the first deadline had passed, GLD sent the parties an application for an extension of time with brief reasons on form N244; a fuller application for relief from sanctions followed on 17 August 2026. Further extensions were sought, and on 25 August 2026 Ceri Hopewell, an Administrative Court lawyer exercising delegated powers, granted one, saying she had “reluctantly decided to grant the most recent extension of time sought by the defendant”. An order made by Fordham J on 18 September 2026 was then not complied with by its deadline, and no extension was sought by that time. After 4pm on 29 September 2026, the defendant applied to extend time for evidence due that day and for its skeleton argument, citing the effect of the disclosure exercise and difficulties with CLOSED evidence, including access and system outages.
The judge’s findings
Mr Justice Chamberlain said he placed very little weight on the defendant’s submission that his team had been working hard with limited resources, because there was almost no evidence to support it. He said the defendant could have filed witness statements explaining what steps had been taken, when the problem was identified and what consideration was given to the other parties, but in every application but one had provided only a few wholly unspecific sentences on form N244. He said it was difficult to avoid the impression that the Secretary of State and his representatives had come to regard procedural directions as optional, and that they appeared to have assumed any detriment from a rescheduled hearing would be borne by the other parties and the court rather than by the Secretary of State or his team.
Directions and wider guidance
The judge directed a further directions hearing on 9 October 2026 at which the court would relist the substantive hearing during the Michaelmas Term 2026 and set directions leading to it. He ruled that, whatever the outcome of the claims, the defendant may not recover the costs of preparing the documents filed in breach of Mould J’s order. He set out general observations for practitioners, including that opposed applications for extensions of time should be made well before a deadline expires, that generic reasons are unlikely to be sufficient, and that in many cases a witness statement from the lawyer with conduct of the litigation will be required. He directed that a copy of the judgment be sent to the Treasury Solicitor.
Correction, 24 October 2026: an earlier version presented the judge’s words “a textbook example of bad litigation practice” as his description of the defendant’s conduct across the series of applications; he used them of the application of 29 September 2026. An earlier version also said the hearing had been relisted for the Michaelmas Term; the judgment directs a further hearing on 9 October 2026 to relist it. It has been corrected.