To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many legal proceedings naming her Department as a defending party have been (a) filed, (b) concluded and (c) dismissed in each of the last five years. (255251)

Legal proceedings involving the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government are handled on behalf of the Secretary of State by the Treasury Solicitors Department, which has supplied the information requested in the following table.

The upper part of the table (‘client group DCLG’) shows the cases in which the Department was directly involved. The lower part of the table (‘client group PINS’) shows cases where, although the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government was cited as the respondent, the challenged decisions had been delegated by the Secretary of State to a Planning Inspector, and so in practical terms the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) and not the Department was the respondent.

This right hand column shows the number of cases filed in the calendar years 2006, 2007, 2008. The number of cases filed, and in which the Department was directly involved were, respectively 2006: 162, 2007: 135, 2008: 99. The corresponding figures for cases handled by the Planning Inspectorate were 2006: 172, 2007: 181, 2008: 212.

The table also shows the number of cases closed per year. For example, of the 162 cases directly involving the Department which were opened in 2006, 17 were closed in 2006, 56 were closed in 2007, 47 were closed in 2008, one has been closed in 2009, and 41 still remain open. The table shows the equivalent figures for cases opened in 2007 and 2008, and the figures for cases handled by the Planning Inspectorate.

The Department of Communities and Local Government was created on 5 May 2006, so no legal proceedings naming the Department were filed before that date. The figures for 2006 in the table do however include cases opened between 1 January 2006 and 5 May 2006 involving the predecessor Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.