A nice case this morning from Green J, Ipswich Town FC v Suffolk Chief Constable [2017] EWHC 375 (QB), available at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2017/375.html. The football club had to pay for a police presence in streets immediately surrounding the club during a match, but not elsewhere. The police, however, insisted in their usual flat-footed way on being paid for the whole security operation, including streets some distance away in respect of which they had no right whatever to charge. Could the Club recover the excess? Yes. This was a Woolwich-style case, the police being a public authority levying unauthorised charges and there being no need for legal compulsion (though this was said to be de facto present, in the impracticability of  holding the match without police co-operation). In addition there was a claim for money paid by mistake of law, the contract being held void on the basis that a non-severable part of it concerned an unlawful charge. Nor was it open for the police to argue -- even if they could show this, which they couldn't -- that, had they known they were only entitled to charge for the immediately surrounding streets, they would have made a higher charge per man. (Apparently with policemen, as in discount stores such as Lidl, there can sometimes be discounts for quantity).

I have a little doubt about the latter holding, since the result of it seems to be that if the police could have shown theat they would have charged more for a more limited operation, Ipswich would have ended up paying less for protection than they otherwise would. Apart from that the decision seems to me sensible.

Andrew