The Commissioners learned that a Home Civil Service department operating in Northern Ireland had used random sifting in a number of its recruitment competitions. The department, faced by a large number of applicants and wishing to be fair to all of them, had wanted to reduce the size of the field by selecting applications at random.
Treasury Counsel subsequently advised that there had been a breach of the Commissioners' regulatory regime. This was because no attempt had been made to consider applicants equally on merit at each stage of the selection process. Counsel advised that the appointments would be unlawful unless the Commissioners were to approve them using a special provision in the Civil Service Order in Council 1995 which had not previously been used.
Exceptionally, the Commissioners were prepared to do so because the recruitment exercises had been run with the best motives; the applicants had entered them in good faith; and in many cases the appointees had now worked in the Civil Service for some years. However, the Commissioners did not have the power to give retrospective approval. So, to ensure continuity of the appointees' entitlement to a pension, the department concerned had to admit the staff involved to Schedule 1 of the Superannuation Act to cover the period from their initial recruitment to the date when they were properly appointed. About 170 staff were involved.
