Statutory interpretation is a cornerstone of common law adjudication, and a recent UK Supreme Court case vividly illustrates how interpretive choices can have far-reaching practical consequences.
In Wathen-Fayed v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2025] UKSC 32, the Court confronted an ambiguity in the Cremation Act 1902 regarding what exactly counts as a “crematorium” for purposes of siting restrictions.
The dispute may appear narrow – centered on whether ancillary structures like memorial gardens fall within the statutory definition – but its resolution showcases the judiciary’s use of interpretive rules to achieve a sensible result. Indeed, the case demonstrates how judges consider not only text and historical purpose but also the consequences of rival interpretations. Crucially, the judgment highlights the legal system’s commitment to certainty and coherence in the law.
The Wathen-Fayed case: crematorium siting and an ambiguous definition
The Wathen-Fayed litigation arose from a proposed new crematorium development in Surrey that included a main cremation hall (with a furnace or “cremator”), along with a ceremony hall, memorial gardens and other facilities. A 1902 statute imposes buffer zones prohibiting construction of a crematorium within 200 yards of any dwelling-house and 50 yards of any public highway.
The central issue was from which point on the site those distances should be measured, which in turn depended on what areas count as part of the “crematorium” under the Act. The statutory definition in section 2 of the Cremation Act 1902 defines a “crematorium” as “any building fitted with appliances for the purpose of burning human remains, and shall include everything incidental or ancillary thereto”. In other words, the Act clearly covers the building containing the cremation furnaces, and it extends to things incidental or ancillary to that burning purpose – but the scope of those ancillary elements was open to debate.
Mrs. Heini Wathen-Fayed (the appellant) contended that the proposed memorial garden for ash storage on the site was incidental to cremation, thus part of the “crematorium” and triggering the statutory distance limits (which would have rendered the site unsuitable). The developers and Secretary of State disagreed, arguing that only the core cremation building (and perhaps related structures for the cremation process) should count, meaning the distance would be measured from that building and the project would comply.
This question had in fact divided the courts below. The Deputy High Court Judge adopted a relatively literal and purpose-focused approach: he reasoned that “any building, structure or open area…used in the process of burning human remains” at the facility would be part of the crematorium. In his view, the Act’s purpose was public health – protecting neighbors from the smoke or emissions of burning remains – so any area used in that burning process (even if outside the main building) should count. However, he found that storing ashes in a memorial garden, pending their removal off-site, was not part of the burning process, even if scattering ashes would be ancillary (because strewing ashes is a customary final step of handling remains).
The Court of Appeal took a slightly different tack. It agreed that the statutory definition covers functions incidental to cremation, but it confined those to buildings or structures on site – for example, the chapel, furnace room, or areas where ashes are processed – and not open ground like garden space. The appellate judges emphasised that the Act’s wording (“a building”) implies built structures, and that the radius clause (which speaks of where a crematorium may be constructed) naturally concerns physical structures rather than gardens. They also noted that the Act does not regulate what happens to ashes after cremation; activities like scattering ashes can occur long after and off-site, so such practices are not “incidental…to the process of cremation” in the legal sense.
A broad reading to include open memorial gardens would, in their view, go beyond the mischief at which the law was aimed (noxious effects of burning) and would place unnecessary impediments on new crematoria without public health benefit. Thus, by the time the case reached the Supreme Court, the prevailing interpretation was that the “crematorium” for purposes of the distance rule meant the cremator building and any other essential cremation-related structures, but not ornamental or non-essential grounds.
Mrs. Wathen-Fayed persisted in arguing for a broader interpretation. Her counsel pointed to the literal breadth of the words “include everything incidental or ancillary thereto,” asserting that storing or disposing of ashes is necessarily incidental to the cremation purpose (since cremation inherently produces ashes to be handled). They cautioned against artificially limiting “crematorium” to buildings when the Act itself did not explicitly exclude open areas.
They also invoked historical context: in 1902, cremation was controversial and sensibilities were delicate, so Parliament might have intended a wider buffer to address not just smoke but public sensibility about proximity to cremation sites.
Finally, the appellant noted that for decades government officials and industry practitioners had assumed a broader understanding – as reflected in an official Guidance and regulations in 2008 – and that Parliament itself had amended the law for London by redefining “crematorium” more narrowly in 1935 and 1971 (implying the original law had a wider reach).
In contrast, the Government and interested party (the crematorium developer) urged a textual reading anchored in the word “building”. They argued that section 2’s first words — “any building fitted with appliances…” — are decisive: Parliament defined a crematorium foremost as a building, and only parts of that building or closely related buildings would be included as ancillary. Activities after the burning (like storing ashes) were conceptually distinct and not subject to the distance rule at all. This narrow interpretation, they submitted, aligned with the Act’s historical context and aim: protecting neighbours’ health from smoke and fumes, not regulating memorial gardens.
In July 2025, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Mrs. Wathen-Fayed’s appeal, agreeing with the narrower interpretation that measured the statutory distance from the crematory building itself. Lord Hamblen, writing for the Court, clarified that for purposes of section 5 of the 1902 Act, “‘crematorium’…means ‘a building fitted with appliances for the purposes of burning human remains’”, such that the 200-yard rule is measured from the building housing the cremator.
In practical effect, only the core cremation building (and perhaps any attached structures integral to the cremation process) triggers the buffer zone, not every part of the site. Because the memorial garden for ashes was outside the cremation building, the project did not violate the statute. In reaching this result, the Supreme Court navigated the maze of interpretive principles – textual canons, purposive analysis, presumptions, and aids to construction – to resolve the ambiguity.
The reasoning provides a valuable case study in how English courts apply the traditional rules of statutory interpretation in a modern setting. Before examining the Court’s reasoning in detail, it is worth revisiting those interpretive approaches and some classic cases that illustrate them, as they form the toolkit the justices drew upon.
Traditional rules of statutory interpretation
Legislation, by its nature, often contains ambiguities or broad terms, and judges have developed several time-honoured “rules” or approaches to discern Parliament’s intent. These traditional rules – the literal rule, the golden rule, and the mischief rule – along with the more modern purposive approach, are frequently cited in British legal discourse. They are not strict rules in the binding sense, but rather guiding principles or philosophies that judges may employ. Indeed, courts today tend to take a contextual approach combining elements of all these methods. However, for analytical clarity, each is discussed separately here with illustrative authorities.
The literal rule
Under the literal rule, courts give statutory words their plain, ordinary meaning (their literal, grammatical meaning) and apply the statute exactly as written, so long as the result is neither absurd nor inconsistent with the rest of the Act. This approach reflects the view that the judge’s role is simply to enforce the law as enacted, not to rewrite it to suit notions of justice.
A classic formulation comes from R v Judge of the City of London Court (1892), where Lord Esher MR famously said that if the words of an Act are clear, “you must follow them [even] though they lead to a manifest absurdity” (a strict articulation of literalism).
In practice, few judges are quite so inflexible, but the statement underscores the primacy of statutory text. An example often given is Whiteley v Chappell (1868). In that case, the defendant was charged with impersonating “any person entitled to vote” in an election, after he cast a ballot in the name of a deceased voter. The court applied the statute literally and acquitted him – a dead person, being deceased, is not legally “entitled to vote”, so the law did not cover impersonation of the dead. This outcome, arguably absurd in a broader sense, illustrates the literal rule’s potential to yield counter-intuitive results in the interest of fidelity to wording.
Another example is Fisher v Bell [1961], where a shopkeeper displayed a flick-knife for sale. He was charged under a statute that made “offering for sale” such knives illegal. The court, adhering to the technical literal meaning of “offer” in contract law, held that a shop display is not an offer but an invitation to treat – thus the defendant was not guilty, even though Parliament’s aim was clearly to ban selling weapons.
These cases show that a strictly literal approach can sometimes thwart legislative purpose. Yet the literal rule serves an important function: it ensures predictability and respect for the words Parliament chose. It is generally the starting point – courts look at the plain meaning first. As one leading text observes, legislation is assumed to be carefully drafted, so normally “the same words are intended to mean the same thing” throughout the Act. If the wording is unambiguous, the court will not readily imply exceptions. However, when plain meaning leads to an absurdity or defeats the Act’s obvious goal, judges may turn to the next tool – the golden rule – to tweak the interpretation.
The golden rule
The golden rule is essentially a safety valve to the literal approach. It allows a judge to depart from a word’s ordinary meaning in order to avoid an absurd result or a result that is repugnant to the rest of the statute.
In the oft-cited words of Lord Wensleydale in Grey v Pearson (1857), “the grammatical and ordinary sense of the words is to be adhered to, unless that would lead to some absurdity… in which case the grammatical and ordinary sense… may be modified so as to avoid the absurdity”.
The golden rule, therefore, is not a license for free-ranging policy making, but a constrained adjustment – the court may choose an alternative meaning of a word (if one exists) or read in a limited correction, but “no farther” than necessary to circumvent the absurdity.
A famous illustration is Adler v George [1964] 2 QB 7. The defendant in Adler was caught obstructing military personnel inside a Royal Air Force base. He was charged under the Official Secrets Act 1920, which made it an offence to obstruct Her Majesty’s Forces “in the vicinity of” a prohibited place. On a strictly literal reading, someone obstructing in a prohibited place was not “in the vicinity” (which suggests being near but outside the place).
Applying the literal rule alone would absurdly mean that a person causing trouble just outside the base could be guilty, but the person causing the same trouble inside the base could escape liability. The court used the golden rule to avoid this nonsense. It interpreted “in the vicinity of” to include “within” the place, thus covering Adler’s conduct. This slight stretch of language – effectively reading “vicinity” as “vicinity or within” – preserved the Act’s purpose (protecting sensitive sites from obstruction) and avoided an illogical gap in coverage.
Another example is Re Sigsworth (1935), where a son had murdered his mother and then stood to inherit her estate (since she died intestate and he was next of kin). The Administration of Estates Act clearly gave the estate to the next of kin in such circumstances. There was no ambiguity in the words, but the court invoked the golden rule to prevent the repugnant result of a murderer profiting from his crime. It effectively added an exception that one cannot inherit from a person one has unlawfully killed.
In both cases, the judges respected the statutory text as far as possible, modifying it only to the minimal extent needed to prevent an outcome that Parliament could not have intended. Modern courts express this via the “presumption against absurdity” – they presume Parliament did not intend an interpretation that leads to a result that is “unworkable or impracticable, inconvenient, anomalous or illogical, futile or pointless”, unless the statutory wording is inescapably clear to that effect. Lord Sales in R (PACCAR Inc) v Competition Appeal Tribunal [2023] UKSC 28 recently affirmed that courts will strive to avoid an absurd result, giving “a wide meaning to absurdity” in this context. This principle played a significant role in Wathen-Fayed, as we shall see – the Supreme Court was reluctant to endorse any interpretation of “crematorium” that produced an “impossible, unworkable or impracticable” regime.
The mischief rule
Dating back to the 16th century, the mischief rule instructs the court to look at the statute’s purpose in a specific historical sense: what “mischief” or defect in the prior law did Parliament intend to remedy?
The rule comes from Heydon’s Case (1584), which advised judges to consider four things:
- the common law before the Act,
- the mischief or problem for which the common law did not provide,
- the remedy Parliament has resolved and appointed to cure the disease of the commonwealth, and
- the true reason of the remedy.
The court should then interpret the Act in such a way as to “suppress the mischief and advance the remedy.”
In modern terms, this means favouring the interpretation that best addresses the specific evil the Act was passed to tackle, even if that means stretching or restricting the literal meaning. This approach gives judges more flexibility than the literal or golden rules, because it directly prioritises the Act’s social purpose over a purely textual reading. It is often considered an early form of purposive interpretation.
A classic illustration is Smith v Hughes [1960] 1 WLR 830, under the Street Offences Act 1959. That Act made it an offence for a prostitute to solicit customers “in a street or public place.” In Smith v Hughes, the prostitutes had been calling to men from balconies and windows – not in the street itself. Literally, they might not be liable. But the court applied the mischief rule: the Act’s aim was to clean up the streets and stop the nuisance of solicitation bothering passers-by. Whether the harassing solicitation came from the street or from a window overlooking the street was irrelevant to that mischief. As Lord Parker CJ explained, the mischief was people being molested by solicitation in public places, and that could happen by a person on a balcony just as easily as on the pavement. Thus, the women were found guilty even though they were physically off the street, because interpreting the law to exclude their conduct would undermine the remedy Parliament intended (ending street solicitation).
Another frequently cited case is Corkery v Carpenter [1951] 1 KB 102, which concerned a man convicted of being drunk in charge of a “carriage” on the highway. The defendant had argued that a bicycle is not a carriage, so the law against riding a carriage while intoxicated should not apply. The court examined the Act’s purpose – clearly, to prevent people from using any form of transport on the road while drunk, for the safety of themselves and others. A bicycle, though not literally a “carriage”, is a mode of transport.
Using the mischief rule, the court found that riding a bike while intoxicated was within the statute’s ambit: “The purpose of the Act was to prevent people from using any form of transport on a public highway whilst in a state of intoxication. The bicycle was clearly a form of transport and therefore the [defendant] was correctly charged.”.
By focusing on the statute’s aim, the court closed a loophole (drunken cyclists) that would defeat the law’s protective intent.
The purposive approach
The purposive approach is the prevailing modern doctrine of interpretation in the UK and many other common law jurisdictions. It can be seen as an outgrowth of the mischief rule, broadened to all cases (not just curing old common-law defects) and enriched by the idea that courts should seek to give effect to the general purpose of Parliament with respect to the provision in question.
Rather than focusing only on a narrow “mischief”, purposivism looks at Parliament’s intent in a holistic way – considering the context of the statute, its overall aims, and what a reasonable legislature would have intended the language to mean in the circumstances.
As Lord Bingham succinctly put it in R (Quintavalle) v Secretary of State for Health [2003] 2 AC 687, “The court’s task, within the permissible bounds of interpretation, is to give effect to Parliament’s purpose”. To do so, “the controversial provisions should be read in the context of the statute as a whole, and the statute as a whole should be read in the historical context of the situation which led to its enactment” (Quintavalle [2003] at 695).
This reflects a contextual and purposive reading: words are not examined in isolation, and their meaning may be informed by the problem the statute addresses and the state of the world at the time of enactment.
Importantly, the purposive approach still respects the “permissible bounds” of interpretation – judges cannot ignore or rewrite clear statutory language under the guise of purpose. However, when words are ambiguous or capable of more than one meaning, the court will prefer the meaning that furthers the apparent legislative intent. Sometimes this approach aligns with the literal rule (when the ordinary meaning already achieves the purpose). In other cases, it aligns with the mischief rule or golden rule to avoid defeating the statute’s aim.
Over the past few decades, the UK judiciary has increasingly emphasised purposive construction. This trend was accelerated by factors such as the interpretive ethos of European Union law (which influenced UK courts to read implementing legislation purposively) and cases like Pepper v Hart [1993] AC 593, which, in limited circumstances, permits reference to Hansard (Parliamentary debates) as evidence of legislative intent when statutory wording is ambiguous.
Lord Griffiths in Pepper v Hart championed the view that the days of strict literalism were gone; the job of the court is to make sense of legislation in its context, not to be mechanically bound by superficial meanings. Additionally, modern interpretation texts (like Bennion on Statutory Interpretation) stress that context is king: “courts are to ascertain the meaning of the words used in a statute in light of their context and the purpose of the statutory provision”.
These rules and approaches are not mutually exclusive. In practice, a court may begin with literal meaning, check for absurdity (golden rule), examine purpose and mischief, and consider the broader context – all as part of a single interpretive analysis.
Wathen-Fayed is a prime example of this integrated approach. The Supreme Court considered the statutory text, the historical and legislative context, and the practical consequences of each interpretation. By doing so, it sought to honor Parliament’s purpose in the 1902 Act and to maintain a coherent, certain legal rule.
The Supreme Court’s approach in Wathen-Fayed: text, purpose and avoiding absurdity
Context and purpose of the Cremation Act 1902:
From the outset of its judgment, the Supreme Court anchored its interpretation in the context and purpose of the 1902 Act. The Cremation Act was one of the early laws regulating cremation in the UK, and it was enacted at a time when cremation was a new and somewhat controversial practice.
The historical materials (including a recent Law Commission Consultation Paper) show that cremation in the late 19th century raised both public health concerns and sensitivities about dignity and religion. The specific provision at issue – the “radius clause” in section 5 – was modeled on earlier laws governing cemeteries, which kept burial grounds a certain distance from homes to prevent nuisance.
The mischief targeted by such clauses was essentially the unpleasant or harmful effects associated with disposing of human remains – for burials, concerns about groundwater contamination or odour; for cremation, smoke, ash, and odor affecting nearby residents, as well as general aversion to proximity of such sites.
Lord Hamblen noted that the “underlying concern [of the radius clause] is the distance of houses and roads from the location of the burning process and anything directly connected with that”. In other words, Parliament’s focus in 1902 was on keeping the actual act of incineration – which in those days could produce visible smoke and smell – away from where people live and travel.
This context strongly suggested that ancillary activities not impacting public health (like a quiet garden for ashes) were not the core concern of the legislature. Indeed, the Act is silent on what happens to ashes after cremation; it neither prohibits nor regulates ash dispersal or storage on-site.
The Court took this as indicative that Parliament did not intend the law to extend its reach to memorial gardens or other post-cremation functions, since “those matters occur after the cremation process has finished, sometimes years later, and not necessarily on the same site”.
The justices also examined the statutory text in its immediate context. Section 2 defines “crematorium” as a “building” with cremation equipment, “including everything incidental or ancillary thereto.” Notably, as the Court of Appeal had observed, the opening words plainly say a crematorium “shall mean a building…fitted with appliances…”.
The Supreme Court agreed that this choice of words indicates a primary meaning tied to a physical structure. The phrase “incidental or ancillary thereto” cannot logically expand “crematorium” to include things that are not a building at all, because the statute uses “thereto” – ancillary to the building and its cremation purpose. The Court endorsed the Court of Appeal’s reasoning that this interpretation “has the advantage of simplicity, is in keeping with the underlying purpose of the restrictions of the radius clause…and is consistent with the fact that the restrictions relate to where a crematorium is ‘constructed’”.
Put simply, since the law speaks of where a crematorium may be constructed, it presupposes that a crematorium is something constructible, i.e. a structure. A garden or open field is not “constructed” in the way a building is. Thus, reading “crematorium” to include open land would clash with the statutory language that envisions a crematorium as a constructible thing. This was a largely textual argument, reflecting a literal approach – but crucially, it aligned with the purposive understanding of the statute’s aim.
The Court found a happy convergence here between ordinary meaning (“a building”) and purpose (public health centered on the burning building). There was therefore no need to strain the words beyond their natural meaning; if anything, it was the appellant’s interpretation that strained the text by trying to sweep in areas that are not buildings.
Avoiding absurd results and uncertainty:
An important facet of the Supreme Court’s reasoning was the avoidance of consequences that would make the law impracticable or uncertain. This is where the golden rule (presumption against absurdity) came to the fore. The Court considered the practical effect of defining “crematorium” broadly to include incidental land uses on the site. If you accept the appellant’s view, then whether a particular patch of land is part of “the crematorium” could change over time depending on how that land is used (for example, if ashes were interred in an area of the garden, that area would suddenly become part of the crematorium). This would introduce a troubling variability: the legal buffer zone could expand or contract as a crematorium site added new ancillary features or changed how it used its space.
Lord Hamblen noted that measuring the 200-yard distance from areas of land “dependent upon their use” is “far more difficult to apply” than measuring from a fixed building, and it “makes everything dependent on a variable – land use from time to time”. In contrast, if “crematorium” means the cremator building, the distance is measured from a single, permanent structure, a point that remains constant.
The latter approach provides a clear rule: you can precisely determine the no-build radius on a map once the crematory’s location is known. The former approach could leave planners and courts in endless debates over whether, say, a car park or a footpath on the grounds (arguably “incidental” to the facility) triggers the distance requirement. This uncertainty was deemed an absurd or unworkable result that Parliament was unlikely to have intended. In line with the golden rule, the Court was entitled to reject an interpretation that produced such an anomaly, absent a very plain statutory text compelling that outcome. Here the text was at best ambivalent, so choosing the interpretation that avoided absurdity was justified.
It is worth noting that the Supreme Court’s sensitivity to legal certainty echoes a fundamental principle of the rule of law: laws (especially those restricting use of land or property) should be clear and predictable. A planning authority or developer in 1903 (or 2023) should be able to know ex ante whether a proposed layout violates the 200-yard rule. If “crematorium” were a moving target, expanding whenever a new ancillary feature is added to the site, compliance could become a matter of changing opinion. The Court explicitly cited the Law Commission’s observation that the Court of Appeal’s more limited definition “offers certainty”.
Lord Hamblen added that an even narrower interpretation – measuring from the crematory building alone – is “even more” certain. Indeed, certainty was a decisive factor: “It enables the distance to be measured by reference to a fixed point on a single, permanent, substantial structure”, rather than from potentially impermanent uses of land. This emphasis on certainty illustrates the courts’ pragmatic use of interpretive canons: when faced with two tenable readings, judges may prefer the one that produces a more stable and administrable rule, assuming it aligns with the statute’s purpose. Such preference can be seen as part of the golden rule (avoiding an “inconvenient” or “impracticable” result is avoiding an absurdity in Bennion’s broad sense) and also as a reflection of the broader purposive ethos (a legislature aiming to regulate conduct would intend a clear standard, not one that fluctuates unpredictably).
Use of extrinsic aids and consistent meaning:
In the course of their analysis, the justices also dealt with various aids to interpretation that were presented, showcasing how the modern purposive approach handles external materials.
One was the principle that a word should normally have the same meaning throughout an Act (the presumption of consistent usage). The term “crematorium” appears in multiple sections of the 1902 Act. The appellant argued that since section 2’s definition was broad for other purposes (like licensing), it must be equally broad for section 5’s distance rule. However, the Supreme Court was willing to rebut this presumption in the face of context. Citing Bennion, the judgment noted that consistent meaning is just a starting point, not an absolute. Here, the context – including the 1903 Cremation Regulations issued shortly after the Act – indicated that “crematorium” might have been intended to mean something slightly different when calculating distances.
Notably, Regulation 16 (1903) distinguished between the crematorium building and “adjoining land” used for related purposes. This suggested that contemporaries understood the crematorium proper to be the building, as opposed to ancillary land on the same site. The Court found this contemporaneous subordinate legislation to be a persuasive aid (consistent with the principle that regulations made around the same time and under the Act can illuminate meaning).
In contrast, later developments – such as a 1978 Home Office circular or the 2008 Cremation Regulations – were given little or no weight. The Court observed that “no weight can be placed” on these later interpretations or practices, because they are not part of the Act’s original context and, in the case of informal guidance, carry no legal authority. This is in line with the principle that statutory guidance is not law and only has whatever persuasive value its reasoning warrants.
Here, an official guidance had once opined that areas for disposal of ashes do fall within the definition, but the Supreme Court noted that the guidance offered no reasoning for that view, so the justices were not convinced to follow it. Moreover, none of those sources addressed mere storage of ashes as opposed to scattering, which further weakened their relevance.
The appellant also argued that there was a “settled practice” in the cremation industry of treating memorial gardens as part of the crematorium, implying the law had been understood that way for decades. The Supreme Court was unmoved by this, pointing out that there was no evidence of such consistent practice or reliance sufficient to influence interpretation.
In any event, even if operators had assumed a broader definition, an estoppel-like argument cannot override the correct legal meaning of the statute. The Court did acknowledge that if any unfortunate consequences stem from the Court of Appeal’s or Supreme Court’s clarification of the law (for instance, if some existing crematoria technically violate the radius clause under the clarified definition), the Law Commission is reviewing burial and cremation law and such issues can be addressed legislatively. This indicates a proper judicial modesty: the Court confines itself to interpreting the law as it ought to be read, and leaves policy adjustments to Parliament or the law reform bodies.
Outcome and implications:
By concluding that “crematorium” in section 5 means ‘a building fitted with appliances for burning human remains’”supremecourt.uk, the Supreme Court not only resolved the case at hand (allowing the Surrey crematorium to proceed) but also established a clear precedent for the future. The Wathen-Fayed decision brings clarity and certainty to a question that had long been debated by planners and lawyers. It ensures that when new crematoria are planned, the 200-yard rule will be applied in a consistent, predictable way: measure from the furnace building. This prevents objectors from later arguing that ancillary gardens or car parks on the site retrospectively invalidate a permission.
It also aligns the rest of England and Wales with the position already expressly adopted for London, where local Acts in 1935 and 1971 had redefined “crematorium” for their purposes as “building fitted with appliances for the purpose of burning human remains”.
The Supreme Court’s interpretation, notably, matches that London definition, thereby harmonising the law nationally and reaffirming Parliament’s apparent acceptance (in those later statutes) that the building-centric interpretation is the right one.
In terms of statutory interpretation doctrine, Wathen-Fayed stands as a textbook example of the purposive approach in action. The Court read the 1902 Act in its historical and logical context, identified the statute’s aim (protecting neighbors from the cremation process), and construed ambiguous general words in a manner that furthered that aim rather than undermined it.
At the same time, the judges respected the statutory text – they did not delete “ancillary thereto” from the law, but rather interpreted that phrase in a reasonable, confined way consistent with the word “building” and the Act’s focus on the cremation process itself. In doing so, they applied the Quintavalle principle of giving effect to Parliament’s purpose, and they heeded the PACCAR/Bennion principle by steering clear of an absurd, unworkable result.
The decision also implicitly underscores that judicial interpretation is meant to elucidate and stabilise the law, not sow further confusion. Faced with decades of divergent views on how to measure the radius (even government officials had differed over whether to measure from the cremator, the building, or the site boundary in the past, the Supreme Court opted for the interpretation that “offers certainty” and dispels the ambiguity going forward.
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