Supreme Court to rule this week on EEA-national migrant and housing assistance

The Supreme Court will this week issue a ruling on whether a local authority’s decision that an EEA-national migrant was ineligible for housing assistance under the Housing Act 1996 was lawful.

In Samin v Westminster City Council UKSC 2013/0225 Westminster considered Wadi Samin – a homeless, Austrian national – ineligible for housing assistance in the UK on the basis that he was not a “qualified person” within the meaning of the relevant legislation because he was not in work at the time he applied to the council as homeless and his continuing inability to work due to illness was not temporary.

Samin’s case was rejected by a reviewer, a circuit judge and – in November 2012 – the Court of Appeal.

A five-justice panel of the Supreme Court heard his appeal in March 2015. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the AIRE Centre intervened.

The Court will issue its ruling on Wednesday (27 January), when it will also issue its judgment in the case of Mirga v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions UKSC 2013/0161.

In Mirga, the appellant was Polish and since she was ten she had spent most of her life in the UK, in circumstances where her parents did not enjoy a right to reside.

In 2006, at the age of 17, she was estranged from her father after becoming pregnant. Her application for income support was refused by the DWP on the grounds that she was a ‘person from abroad’ who was not habitually resident in the UK.

The appellant had not acquired a right to reside under the Workers Registration Scheme for nationals from newly acceded countries to the EU.

The issue in Mirga was whether an EU citizen enjoys a right of residence if he or she cannot be removed from a host state except in breach of fundamental rights; whether the social security authorities awarding benefit were able to determine whether an EU citizen has such a right to reside and whether the social security authorities were obliged to consider whether it was proportionate to refuse income support to the appellant in her individual case.