A renewal order under the Mental Health Act 2001 extends the life of an admission order rather than replacing it, the Court of Appeal has said in a judgment concerning an appeal by I.F.
Mr Justice Michael Peart delivered a concurring judgment on 18 April 2018. He agreed with Mr Justice Hogan’s judgment and added that, in his view, the Circuit Court could hear the appeal against the admission order even though a renewal order had been made before the appeal hearing.
The appeal arose after a tribunal affirmed an admission order dated 7 October 2015. A renewal order was made on 27 October 2015, before the appeal hearing before the President of the Circuit Court. The issue was whether the appeal could proceed after that renewal order.
Peart said section 15 of the 2001 Act meant an admission order remained in force for 21 days unless extended. If a renewal order was made within that period, he reasoned, the admission order continued as the legal basis for detention. The renewal order itself did not independently authorise detention; it extended the original order.
He said section 19 allowed an appeal against a tribunal decision affirming an order, which could be an admission order or a renewal of one. Because the admission order had been extended rather than replaced, Peart saw no reason the appeal against it could not be determined or that the Circuit Court had lost jurisdiction.
Peart added that if the appeal were allowed, a renewal order extending the admission order would have no separate relevance once that underlying order was revoked. He described it as having no “free-standing existence or legitimacy”.
He also addressed earlier judgments that referred to renewal orders as the basis for detention, saying those courts had not decided whether such an order had independent status or merely extended an admission order. His view, he said, supplied a basis for allowing I.F.’s appeal, and he also agreed with Hogan’s analysis.
The source is Peart’s concurring judgment only. It does not set out Hogan’s full reasoning or the Court of Appeal’s formal disposition, so the precise final order is not stated here.