All the following ‘products’ of public sector functions are open to challenge: for example –
Decisions in individual cases, and strategic and rationing decisions
Actions (the way in which services are delivered, or assessments done etc)
Policies (criteria, but also unpublished policies, and custom and practice)
Procedures (ones required by statute, or ad hoc ones fleshed out or invented from scratch by the public bodies themselves)
Protocols (for joint working, information sharing, community safety, lottery funding etc)
Omissions to act (service refusals, breaks in service, failure to intervene to protect, etc)
The ground of challenge would be that the action etc. was incompatible with human rights, and it would be brought via judicial review or ordinary civil proceedings, or by way of defence to proceedings the authority itself had initiated ie for a declaration of legality of an operation for an incapacitated person, or for displacement of a nearest relative, or for recovery of service charges, etc.
We think it is likely that members of the public will be more willing to become their own legal advisers, because a letter on a piece of ordinary notepaper making the allegation is all that is necessary to shift the burden of justifying the action or decision or omission, over to the public body. It would be maladministration simply to ignore such allegations, and in the local authority sector, the statutory monitoring officer’s duty will be triggered by allegations which are coherent.