Legitimate Expectation

We all have expectations. Some, like Dickens' Pip, might even have Great Expectations. But whether or not such expectations are legitimate is a very different story.

For if a court finds a person's expectations of a public body to be legitimate, then the body in question will need to honour the particular promise it made to that person. However, demonstrating to a court that the expectation in question is in fact 'legitimate' in terms of public law, can sometimes be a 'Lord of the Rings' excursion.

Hillingdon Case (R (London Borough of Hillingdon) v Secretary of State for Education and Skills [2007] EWHC 514 - 15 March 2007 - Forbes J)

Take Hillingdon. Here the Authority owed a duty (amongst other things) under section 23C(1) of the Children Act 1989 to provide after-care services to any person who has been 'looked after' by the Authority over a prescribed period of time before their 18th birthday. Before the decision of Sullivan J in R (Behre) v Hillingdon (2003) EWHC 2075 (judgment 29 August 2003) it had been thought that these provisions didn't apply to former unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) who had received services from the Authority as children in need under section 17 of the 1989 Act (general local authority duty to safeguard and promote as prescribed the welfare of children in need in their area). However, following the Behre decision it became clear that all relevant local authorities must also provide after-care services to eligible former UASCs under...