In R (Local Faith Ltd) v Registrar General for England & Wales [2025] EWHC 1795 (Admin), the applicant sought leave to judicially review of decision not to register a property in Basildon as a religious building under the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855 [1]. The property was owned by Basildon Estates Ltd, which leased it to another company, Room for Faith Ltd, which in turn sublet it to Local Faith Ltd [2].

Local Faith Ltd acquired the sublease with the initial intention of making the building available to be used for religious meetings and acts of worship and sought to register it on the basis that it would be used for worship by a congregation of Sunni Muslims [3]. That did not proceed, however, and it then applied to register the building on the basis that it would make it available to any religious group wishing to use it and would not normally levy a charge for doing so [4]. The reason for seeking to register the building under the 1855 Act was to escape liability for business rates, but Wall J made it clear that ‘The fact that their aim in making the application for registration under the Act is to avoid such liability is legally irrelevant’ [4].

Local Faith’s application to register the property was refused by the Registrar [5], on the following grounds:

“The criteria for the certification of a building as a place of religious worship takes into account the judgment of the Supreme Court in Hodkin. We are not satisfied that the application meets the requirements. The application does not meet the criteria for religious worship because there is no body or denomination of persons who uses the building or property for that purpose and the activities which you have confirmed have taken place in that building are either commercial or ad hoc in nature” [11].

Local Faith argued that the Registrar had applied the wrong test in reaching that decision. In particular, the reference in the decision letter to Hodkin, it asserted, was irrelevant to the facts of the application. Further, the decision letter indicated that the Registrar had looked solely to the past use of the property in reaching the decision rather than at the use to which the building was intended to be put in future.

Its second (and main) ground of challenge was to the rationality of the decision, averring that the Registrar had

“taken into account irrelevant matters and failed to give weight to relevant matters, such that the decision made was not one properly open to the registrar on the facts … [and] should have registered this building if it was intended by the claimant that the building should be used by a series of religious groups for acts of worship and not refuse the registration application solely on the basis that there was no single identified group who intended to use it” [16].

The Registrar General countered that, as a matter of statutory interpretation, a building could only be registered under the Act if the building was to be used by a body or denomination of persons. In this case, Local Faith proposed to allow the building to be used by any religious group that might seek to use it from time to time – which precluded there being a particular body or denomination that could be identified as intended users.

Further, Schedule A to the Act begins:

“I, the undersigned (a) , of , in the county of , do hereby, under and by virtue of the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855 certify that a certain building known by the name of , situated at , in the county of , within the superintendent registrar’s district of , [was used (b) as a place of meeting for religious worship before the 30th day of June 1852 and] is intended to be used as heretofore (c) and will accordingly be forthwith used as a place of meeting for religious worship by a congregation or assembly of persons calling themselves (d) and I request that this certificate may be recorded in the General Register Office, pursuant to the said Act. Dated this day of , 185 .”

The Schedule and the application form therefore stipulated that the application had to be on behalf of a single religious body which intended to use the building for religious purposes [17&18].

At [22], Wall J agreed:

“’the Act’ is abundantly clear that there must be a single and identified body or denomination of persons, who intend to use the building for religious worship if that building is to be registered under this statute. ‘The Act’ does not merely stipulate that the building is to be used for religious purposes generally, it permits registration of buildings which are to be used in that way by an identified particular group. In my judgment, any other interpretation of the statute would be to strain the clear statutory language to breaking point”.

Leave refused [26].