Abingdon Health PLC on Friday saw shares surge after a legal judgement confirmed that the lateral flow test kit contract award it received from the UK Department of Health & Social Care was lawful.

The Oxford-based company is an international developer and manufacturer of rapid diagnostics tests. Abingdon shares closed 54% higher at 10.02 pence each in London on Friday.

At the conclusion of judicial review proceedings brought by the Good Law Project Ltd against the secretary of state for health and social care, in which Abingdon Health was an interested party, Justice Waksman ruled in favour of the DHSC on all grounds.

All claims brought by the Good Law Project were dismissed, and the contract award decisions by the DHSC for the development and manufacture of lateral flow test kits for Covid-19 antibodies were found to have complied with the principles of public law.

The money received under these contracts totalled £10.3 million, including £5.4 million to cover reimbursement of stock and £200,000 in interest.

This does not include a final £1.5 million cash payment from the DHSC, which was being held until the outcome of the review and is now expected to be released. This brings the total amount paid to Abingdon by the DHSC to £11.8 million.

Abingdon said it was pleased with the judgement, but ‘extremely disappointed’ that its reputation had been called into question.

Chief Executive Officer Chris Yates added: ‘We answered the government’s call for leading UK life sciences companies to respond quickly with solutions to help during the height of the pandemic. We did the right thing. In the end we have been caught in a political cross-fire. We fully support transparency and accountability in the award of public contracts in general, and particularly during the COVID-19 period, but this case was misjudged.’

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