Access all areas: the ghost of Woolworths (Pt 2)

• Despite the Court of Appeal in AB having overturned the suggestion in Woolworths that a prosecution could never meet the expediency test if it was for an offence committed outside the local authority’s area, the decision of the courts of first instance in R (City of York Council) v AUH; R (Birmingham City Council) v BIY nonetheless suggests that Woolworths has not been completely exorcised.

Part 1 of this series considered the decision of the Divisional Court in Brighton and Hove City Council v Woolworths plc [2002] EWHC 2565 (Admin) (Woolworths), in which Mr Justice Field determined that prosecutions for offences outside of the council’s area could not, in the circumstances of the case or otherwise, be expedient for its own inhabitants, as required by s 222(1) of the Local Government Act 1972 (LGA 1972) (see ‘Access all areas: the ghost of Woolworths’, NLJ,