UK Judicial Review Statistics 2026: What the Numbers Show (and What They Don’t)

Judicial review is the most argued-about procedure in UK public law, and most of the arguing happens without numbers. If your dissertation touches government accountability, immigration decision-making, or access to justice, the Ministry of Justice publishes a quarterly data series that tells you how many judicial review applications are actually lodged, what happens to them at the permission stage, and which public bodies get challenged most. This article sets out the latest figures and — just as importantly — what each number does and does not measure.

All figures come from the Ministry of Justice’s Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly: January to March 2026, accredited official statistics published 4 June 2026 and last updated 11 June 2026. The series covers England and Wales.

Key findings, January to March 2026

• 1,300 judicial review applications were received in Q1 2026 — up 98% on the 660 received in Q1 2025, and the highest quarterly level since Q4 2015.
• Of those, 490 were civil immigration and asylum applications (up 105%), 780 were civil (other) — the highest since this time series began — and 32 were criminal (up 3%).
• Of the applications that reached the permission stage in the quarter (210), 12% (26) were found to be totally without merit.
• 42 cases were granted permission (in full or in part) to proceed, while 120 were refused at the permission stage. None of the refused cases had yet been granted permission at the renewal stage.
• The mean time from lodging to the permission decision was 37 days.
• By defendant, the Home Office received the most applications (490), followed by local authorities (360) and the Ministry of Justice (180).

The permission stage is where most judicial reviews end

The single most useful thing this series teaches a dissertation writer is the shape of the process. A judicial review does not begin with a hearing; it begins with an application for permission to proceed. The Q1 2026 data shows 210 applications reaching the permission stage within the quarter. Of these, 42 were granted permission in full or in part, and 120 were refused — with 26 of the refusals marked as totally without merit. Only 42 cases were assessed as eligible for a final hearing, and just 4 had actually been heard by the time the bulletin was compiled.

Two consequences follow for your argument. First, any claim about how courts decide judicial reviews describes a very small, heavily filtered subset of applications — the permission stage, not the courtroom, is where the bulk of cases are resolved. Second, cases lodged in a quarter have not finished by the end of it: the bulletin itself notes that timeliness figures from lodging to final hearing are “based on too few cases to be meaningful” this early. Treat within-quarter counts as snapshots of different cohorts, not as a single pipeline — the reconciliation traps are the same ones covered in our guide to UK civil justice statistics, which this series shares a bulletin with.

Which government bodies get judicially reviewed?

Table 2.5 of the publication breaks applications down by defendant — the individual department or public body being challenged.

There is a data-quality caveat you must carry into any use of this table: the defendant classification is derived from a free-text field completed by the claimant, then matched and grouped by department. The publisher warns that it is open to inputting errors and should be used with caution. A dissertation that ranks departments by challenge volume without stating that caveat is asserting more precision than the source claims.

What drove the 2026 surge?

The bulletin attributes the near-doubling of applications to rises in two categories: civil (other) judicial reviews, which reached their highest level since the series began, and civil immigration and asylum applications, which more than doubled year-on-year (up 105%). Note what the data can and cannot support here. It tells you that applications rose and where they rose; it does not tell you why. Explanations — policy changes, litigation campaigns, decision-making quality — belong to your analysis and need their own evidence. A number can anchor a research question; it cannot answer one. If you are still choosing that question, our guide to finding law dissertation topics shows how to build one from a live legal controversy.

What this series does not measure

• Not the UK. The series covers England and Wales. Scotland’s equivalent procedure (the petition for judicial review in the Court of Session) and Northern Ireland’s are separate systems with separate statistics.
• Not tribunals. Many immigration challenges proceed in the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) rather than the High Court — indeed, 5 of this quarter’s immigration applications were transferred to the UTIAC. High Court counts understate total immigration litigation.
• Not outcomes for society. An application refused at permission is not evidence the underlying decision was lawful, and a granted permission is not a win. The data measures procedural events, not the merits of government behaviour.
• Not settlements. Cases that settle after a claim is lodged but before permission never appear as substantive outcomes.

Using judicial review data in a dissertation

Judicial review statistics belong in socio-legal work: arguments about access to justice, the practical operation of accountability mechanisms, or the behaviour of a specific decision-maker. If your dissertation is doctrinal — an argument about what the law of standing or proportionality is — case volumes add nothing to the analysis. Our comparison of doctrinal, socio-legal and comparative legal research explains which commitments each approach makes. For the judgments and legislation themselves, start from primary legal sources.

When you cite the figures, cite the specific quarterly release (publisher, title, reference period, publication date, table number), because the collection page updates every quarter. The publication also ships a dedicated judicial review data visualisation tool offering breakdowns by department and case type — useful for exploration, but cite the underlying tables, not the tool’s screen.

Research questions this series can actually support

Because the publication is quarterly and the accompanying tables extend the series back through time, the data supports genuinely longitudinal questions. Comparing the current quarter with the same quarter in earlier years — the comparison the publisher itself makes — controls for seasonality in lodging behaviour. Some dissertation-sized questions the series can carry:

• Volume and composition over time: how the balance between immigration and non-immigration judicial reviews has shifted since the mid-2010s, and what that implies about where administrative-law pressure now sits. The Q1 2026 figure — the highest since Q4 2015 — gives such a question a live anchor.
• The permission filter: what proportion of applications clear the permission stage across defendant types, using table 2.5’s per-defendant permission counts. The Q1 2026 contrast between the Home Office (1% of applications granted permission so far) and local authorities (7%) is a finding in search of an explanation — and the explanation is your literature review’s job, not the table’s.
• Timeliness as access to justice: the 37-day mean from lodging to permission decision is a measurable component of how quickly public-law challenges are resolved, and the series lets you track it.

What the series cannot carry is any question about the quality of decisions, the merits of claims, or the deterrent effect of costs — none of which are observed variables here. If your question needs those, the statistics are context, and your method needs another evidence source entirely.

Frequently asked questions

How many judicial review applications are made in England and Wales?

1,300 applications were received in January to March 2026, up 98% on the 660 received in the same quarter of 2025 and the highest quarterly figure since late 2015 (MoJ, Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly).

What proportion of judicial reviews succeed?

The honest answer is that a single “success rate” is not derivable from one quarter’s data: cases lodged in a quarter have mostly not concluded within it. What the Q1 2026 data does show is that of 210 applications reaching the permission stage, 42 were granted permission and 120 refused — permission, not the final hearing, is the decisive filter.

Who is the most challenged defendant in judicial review?

In Q1 2026, the Home Office (490 applications), followed by local authorities (360) and the Ministry of Justice (180) — subject to the publisher’s caution that defendant classification relies on a free-text field.

What does “totally without merit” mean in the statistics?

It is a formal certification a judge can attach when refusing permission, which restricts the claimant’s right to renew the application at an oral hearing. In Q1 2026, 12% of applications reaching the permission stage (26 of 210) were certified totally without merit.

Do these figures include Scotland and Northern Ireland?

No. The series applies to England and Wales only. Writing “UK judicial review applications doubled” from this source is a sourcing error.

Where do I find the underlying tables?

The MoJ publishes the bulletin with accompanying ODS/CSV tables (judicial review figures are in the 2.x tables) and a judicial review data visualisation tool, all on the same GOV.UK release page.

Build the argument around the number

A statistic earns its place in a dissertation only when you state the series, the boundary and the caveat alongside it. Tesify helps you structure that evidence into a chapter plan and keep every source traceable as you write — 100% written by you.

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