Members of the senior judiciary have expressed concern about the ‘over-judicialisation’ of welfare in the context of homelessness decision-making and adjudication. This paper examines how those fears have been manifested and makes a link with the concept of proportionate dispute resolution (PDR). It argues that the statutory scheme incorporates elements of PDR and judges should therefore refrain from introducing additional layers. The courts’ denial of the application of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights to the homelessness context is disputed, and the paper makes the case for continuing rigorous judicial oversight of front-line decision-making, recommending that attention is focused on assessing procedural safeguards rather than disputing the ambit of Article 6.

The tribunals system in England and Wales has been transformed by the entry into force of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007; among other things, tribunals are now located more firmly and explicitly than ever before within the judicial branch. Questions concerning the relationship between tribunals and regular courts fall to be confronted afresh within this new institutional landscape. Those questions form the focus of this article, which is particularly concerned with the issue recently considered by the Supreme Court in Cart whether, and if so to what extent, decisions taken within the tribunals system (by the Upper Tribunal) should be susceptible to judicial review by the High Court. In Cart, emphasis was placed upon the concept of “proportionate dispute resolution” as a means by which to delimit regular courts' oversight of tribunals' decisions, raising fundamental questions both of legal doctrine (relating to the relevance of the orthodox doctrinal tools of administrative law) and legal policy (concerning the degree of error on the part of a tribunal that a higher court should tolerate in the interests of the efficient, or proportionate, use of judicial resources).