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The Parole Board for England and Wales


You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> The Parole Board for England and Wales >> Singh, Application for Reconsideration [2025] PBRA 123 (16 June 2025)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/PBRA/2025/123.html
Cite as: [2025] PBRA 123

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[2025] PBRA 123

 

 

Application for Reconsideration by Singh

 

Application

 

1.   This is an application by Singh (the Applicant) for reconsideration of a decision dated 2 May 2025 not to direct his release. The decision was made by a panel after an oral hearing.

 

2.   Rule 28(1) of the Parole Board Rules 2019 (as amended by the Parole Board (Amendment) Rules 2024) (the Parole Board Rules) provides that applications for reconsideration may be made in eligible cases (as set out in rule 28(2)) either on the basis (a) that the decision contains an error of law, (b) that it is irrational and/or (c) that it is procedurally unfair.

 

3.   I have considered the application on the papers. These are the decision, the dossier (consisting of 864 numbered pages), and the application for reconsideration.

 

Background

 

4.   On 12 December 2011, the Applicant received three concurrent sentences of imprisonment for public protection following conviction after trial on three counts of rape of a female aged 16 or over. The tariff was set at 11 years (less time spent on remand). It expired in November 2021.

 

5.   The Applicant was released in February 2023 following an oral hearing before the Parole Board. His licence was revoked in August 2023, and he was returned to custody. It is reported that he was recalled following his arrest on suspicion of rape. The matter proceeded to court, but it is reported that the CPS offered no evidence as it was not satisfied that the complainant’s account was credible or reliable, and that there was therefore no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.

 

6.   The Applicant was 33 years old at the time of sentencing and is now 46 years old.

 

Request for Reconsideration

 

7.   The application for reconsideration has been submitted by the Applicant directly. It argues that the decision was irrational and procedurally unfair. No submissions were made regarding error of law.

 

8.   The application is supplemented by written arguments to which reference will be made in the Discussion section below.

 

Current Parole Review

 

9.   The Applicant’s case was referred to the Parole Board by the Secretary of State (the Respondent) in September 2023 to consider whether to direct his release. If release was not directed the Board was invited to advise the Respondent whether the Applicant should be transferred to open conditions. It is only the release decision that is subject to reconsideration. This is the Applicant’s first parole review since recall.

 

10.The case proceeded to an oral hearing on 24 April 2025, before a three-member panel including a psychologist specialist member. The panel took oral evidence from the Applicant, the Prison Offender Manager (POM), the Community Offender Manager (COM) and a forensic psychologist commissioned by HMPPS. The Applicant was legally represented throughout the hearing.

 

11.The panel did not direct the Applicant’s release. It concluded that his risk of serious harm remained very high and could not be managed safely in the community, even with extensive external controls. The panel considered that the Applicant had quickly returned to risky and sexually preoccupied behaviour following release, including engaging in impersonal sexual encounters with strangers, breaching licence conditions, and failing to disclose relevant information to the Probation Service. The panel found that the Applicant had provided multiple, contradictory accounts, displayed manipulative and dishonest behaviour, and had not developed sufficient internal controls or insight to manage his risk. All professional witnesses agreed that risk remained unmanageable and that further core risk reduction work was required before any progression could be considered.

 

The Relevant Law

 

12.The Parole Board will direct release if it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that the prisoner should be confined.

 

Parole Board Rules 2019 (as amended)

 

13.Rule 28(1) of the Parole Board Rules provides the types of decision which are eligible for reconsideration. Decisions concerning whether the prisoner is or is not suitable for release on licence are eligible for reconsideration whether made by a paper panel (rule 19(1)(a) or (b)) or by an oral hearing panel after an oral hearing (rule 25(1)) or by an oral hearing panel which makes the decision on the papers (rule 21(7)). Decisions concerning the termination, amendment, or dismissal of an IPP licence are also eligible for reconsideration (rule 31(6) or rule 31(6A)).

 

14.Rule 28(2) of the Parole Board Rules provides the sentence types which are eligible for reconsideration. These are indeterminate sentences (rule 28(2)(a)), extended sentences (rule 28(2)(b)), certain types of determinate sentence subject to initial release by the Parole Board (rule 28(2)(c)) and serious terrorism sentences (rule 28(2)(d)).

 

15.A decision to recommend or not to recommend a move to open conditions is not eligible for reconsideration under rule 28. This has been confirmed by the decision on the previous reconsideration application in Barclay [2019] PBRA 6.

 

Procedural unfairness

 

16.Procedural unfairness means that there was some procedural impropriety or unfairness resulting in the proceedings being fundamentally flawed and therefore, producing a manifestly unfair, flawed, or unjust result. These issues (which focus on how the decision was made) are entirely separate to the issue of irrationality which focusses on the actual decision.

 

17.In summary an Applicant seeking to complain of procedural unfairness under rule 28 must satisfy me that either:

 

(a)        express procedures laid down by law were not followed in the making of the relevant decision;

(b)        they were not given a fair hearing;

(c)        they were not properly informed of the case against them;

(d)        they were prevented from putting their case properly; and/or

(e)        the panel was not impartial.

 

18.The overriding objective is to ensure that the Applicant’s case was dealt with justly.

 

Irrationality

 

19.The power of the courts to interfere with a decision of a competent tribunal on the ground of irrationality was defined in Associated Provincial Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223 (CA) by Lord Greene in these words: “if a decision on a competent matter is so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could ever have come to it, then the courts can interfere”. The same test applies to a reconsideration panel when determining an application on the basis of irrationality.

 

20.In R(DSD and others) v Parole Board [2018] EWHC 694 (Admin) the Divisional Court applied this test to Parole Board hearings in these words (at [116]): “the issue is whether the release decision was so outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it.”

 

21.In R(Wells) v Parole Board [2019] EWHC 2710 (Admin) Saini J set out what he described as a more nuanced approach in modern public law which was “to test the decision maker’s ultimate conclusion against the evidence before it and to ask whether the conclusion can (with due deference and with regard to the panel’s expertise) be safely justified on the basis of that evidence, particularly in a context where anxious scrutiny needs to be applied)”. This test was adopted by the Divisional Court in R(Secretary of State for Justice) v Parole Board [2022] EWHC 1282(Admin).

 

22.As was made clear by Saini J in Wells, this is not a different test to the Wednesbury test. The interpretation of and application of the Wednesbury test in parole hearings as explained in DSD was binding on Saini J.

 

23.It follows from those principles that in considering an application for reconsideration the reconsideration panel will not substitute its view of the evidence for that of the panel who heard the witnesses.

 

24.Further while the views of the professional witnesses must be properly considered by a panel deciding on release, the panel is not bound to accept their assessment. The panel must however make clear in its reasons why it is disagreeing with the assessment of the witnesses.

 

The reply on behalf of the Respondent

 

25.The Respondent has advised that no representations will be submitted in response to this application.

 

Discussion

 

26.The application asserts that the panel’s decision was both procedurally unfair and irrational. The application takes the form of a handwritten statement responding in detail to several passages of the written decision. I have considered this application with care, alongside the underlying decision letter and the relevant legal framework.

 

27.Turning first to the alleged procedural unfairness, the Applicant argues that the panel relied upon inaccurate or prejudicial information relating to past allegations and cautions. He disputes having accepted a caution for unlawful sexual intercourse and denies several historical allegations that were referred to in the panel’s summary of the offending history. He also takes issue with the panel’s reliance on his supposed admission in a 2017 SARN report that he assaulted a former partner. While these points may reflect the Applicant’s ongoing challenge to how his risk has historically been assessed, I do not find that the panel’s approach breached the requirements of procedural fairness. The panel carefully noted that it was not making findings of fact in respect of the historic allegations, recognised the passage of time, and correctly treated the disputed material as part of a pattern that informed risk formulation rather than proof of individual incidents. There is no suggestion that the Applicant was prevented from making representations about this material during the hearing.

 

28.The Applicant also objects to the weight placed on the polygraph disclosures and subsequent accounts concerning sexual activity while on licence. He alleges the examiner’s questions were leading or pressurising, and that he later corrected the record. However, the panel was entitled to assess his credibility and the consistency of his accounts. It noted that the Applicant gave the original disclosure voluntarily during polygraph testing, reaffirmed it in contemporaneous representations, and only later offered an alternative version. The panel was entitled to conclude that his shifting explanations undermined his reliability, and that the original disclosures were more likely to be accurate.

 

29.I do not consider that the panel’s use of the polygraph evidence amounted to procedural unfairness. There is no evidence that the panel relied on it in a determinative or uncritical way. Rather, the panel triangulated the information from multiple sources, including the COM, POM, and psychologist, and explicitly acknowledged the multiple instances on which it declined to make findings of fact.

 

30.As to irrationality, the Applicant disputes several of the panel’s conclusions, including the finding of sexual preoccupation, the level of risk assessed, and the rejection of his explanations regarding deleted phone data, boundary breaches, and his choice of associates. However, it is clear from the decision that the panel engaged with the evidence in considerable and meticulous detail. The panel’s reasoning was thorough, and it gave clear explanations as to why it preferred the evidence of the professionals, particularly in light of the Applicant’s repeated provision of mutually incompatible accounts and limited engagement with reflective work since recall.

 

31.The panel ultimately concluded that the Applicant’s risk remained too high to be managed safely in the community. That conclusion was consistent with the evidence of all three professional witnesses, and it cannot be said to fall outside the range of reasonable outcomes available to the panel.

 

32.I find that, while the Applicant plainly disagrees with the panel’s conclusions and offers an alternative interpretation of events, the decision itself was not flawed by procedural unfairness nor was it irrational in the public law sense.

 

Decision

 

33.For the reasons set out above, I am satisfied that the panel’s decision not to direct release was rational and procedurally fair. The application for reconsideration must therefore be refused.

 

 

 

Stefan Fafinski

16 June 2025

 

 

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