Answer
The case won by Primary Health Investment Properties is being looked upon as a positive action that will mean that the NHS Litigation Authority will in the future need to ensure that natural justice is carried out. This may well require them to appoint independent valuers possibly through an organisation such as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. However, this is far from certain and the Litigation Authority are, at this moment, probably considering their options. Do they have to follow the aforementioned route? Could they make technical alterations to the existing system to waylay the judge’s concerns? This all unfortunately leads to another problem in that such actions will inevitably cause delays for GPs currently in or wanting to use the system.
With the uncertainties of how the appeal procedure should now work, it is inevitable that cases will be delayed whilst procedures are being reconsidered. Furthermore, if the Litigation Authority decide to use independent experts appointed outside the NHS, there could well be a cost consideration which, certainly if any appeal is unsuccessful, may fall back onto the GPs.
The matter is possibly even further reaching in that, since the 2004 Directions, some PCTs have observed that the Directions themselves do not include any appeal route and have thus sought to alter the old system which allowed representations to be made by a Practice or their surveyor to a DV and then, failing that, for the matter to be passed on to the Secretary of State (in the form of the NHS Litigation Authority in the form of their Family Health Services Appeals Unit). To simplify matters, some PCTs were looking at undertaking certain stages of the appeal route themselves or even determining whether or not they would allow GPs to challenge the DV’s figure in the first place. My understanding is that the NHS Litigation Authority has now sought to advise some of these PCTs that their actions clearly curtailed the rights of GPs and are not acting within the doctrine of natural justice. This may well cause some PCTs to rethink their whole procedure which, in the long term, could be positive but, in the short term, could create substantial delays for doctors with legitimate challenges on their` level of actual or notional rent reimbursement.
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