UMAPs has filed notice confirming its intention to renew its application for permission to proceed with its judicial review challenging the making and adoption of the Leng Review recommendations. We are asking the court to reconsider permission at an oral hearing where the parties’ arguments and evidence can be tested in open court, rather than resolved on paper.
We do not accept any of the 19 conclusions reached in the refusal, and we believe they cannot survive scrutiny once the evidence is fully examined at an oral hearing.
This process is not concluded despite premature statements from other interested parties. Statements issued since the initial refusal by other parties to these proceedings, including the BMA, do not convey the full position. The notice filed yesterday means the lawfulness of the decisions taken on 16 July 2025 remains before the court. It is not uncommon for permission to be granted at an oral renewal hearing, after being denied on paper.
We want to recognise the many employers who have chosen not to implement the recommendations pending the outcome of these proceedings, and who have continued to support and deploy their Associates through this entire process that has been manifestly unfair. The renewal filed today is our route to voicing our full arguments and presenting cogent evidence into open court, where employers can make their own informed decisions regarding the review, its recommendations and its impact.
The refusal relies on the characterisation of the Leng Review as a “sophisticated and independent exercise of judgement”, a phrase used at the urgent interim relief hearing in August last year, when the review itself was not in challenge. Since then, the review has been challenged, Professor Gillian Leng has been added as a defendant, and further evidence has emerged which we believe strengthens our claim. We will be bringing all this to the attention of the court at renewal.
The decision-on-paper records that UMAPs was part of the core stakeholder group and therefore had opportunity to provide feedback. We disagree. Being named on a stakeholder list is not the same as being consulted. UMAPs had drastically unequal access to proposed recommendations compared to declared anti-Associate parties and were not meaningfully engaged before decisions were taken that have ended Associate careers. We will be inviting the court to look closely at the relevant evidence at the renewal hearing.
We continue to stand by our position that the recommendations were adopted for a collateral purpose: accommodating pressure from activist resident doctors within the BMA, DoctorsVote, Royal Medical Colleges and other aligned groups. We believe we have evidence to support this contention and look forward to putting it before a judge, and the public, in open court.
The Associate workforce is around 80% female and around half from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. They have had the job market foreclosed, had their scope of practice unfairly and needlessly restricted, and have been subjected to sustained harassment at work and online. No adequate assessment of this impact has been conducted or published on patients or Associates.
We look forward to the opportunity to have our arguments heard properly and in full in an open court and remain confident that a just outcome will be delivered for the employers, Associates and patients harmed by this review.
Stephen Nash, UMAPs General Secretary says:
“We have filed yesterday for our members, who deserve a public hearing in open court instead of an exercise conducted on paper. The order published last week was decided without meaningfully engaging with the full set of evidence we had submitted. We believe we have evidence that vindicates our position and it needs to be openly heard before the court and the public.
We do not accept any of the conclusions reached in the refusal. We have total confidence in our legal team, our arguments and in the evidence behind them, and we are asking for them to be put in front of a judge in open court. The Leng Review and its recommendations have caused untold harm to employers, Associates, and patients. This renewal notice is the next step in delivering a just outcome for them.”
