Judge rejects challenge over refusal of support under s.17 Children Act

A High Court judge has rejected a judicial review challenge brought by a claimant via her mother over a London borough’s decision to refuse to provide accommodation and support.

The case of O, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Lambeth [2016] EWHC 937 (Admin) concerned Lambeth’s decision on 14 August 2015 to refuse to provide support under the provisions of section 17 of the Children Act 1989.

The claimant's (O’s) case was that it was irrational for the assessing social worker for Lambeth to conclude that she and her mother (PO) were neither homeless nor destitute, and consequently that the assessment under s17 was unlawful.

O accepted that Lambeth had no power to offer accommodation or financial support to O or PO unless the defendant council concluded that the claimant's mother was unable to support the claimant financially (i.e. that they were destitute) and/or that the family was homeless.

The claimant accepted that the assessment of that question was primarily one for the judgement of the social workers in the local authority area. However, it was argued that the judgements in this case were tainted by failures of logic or enquiry and so fell to be quashed.

The mother, a Nigerian national and O's litigation friend, is in the UK in breach of immigration laws and is not an asylum seeker and so is not eligible for certain benefits.

Helen Mountfield QC, sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court, rejected the challenge.

The deputy judge concluded that the assessing social worker was entitled not to be satisfied that the family was destitute. “He could rationally conclude that Ms O continued to have sources of income available to her, from the combination of (a) the fact that a reasonable level of financial support had been available until March 2015 and was apparent on her bank statements, but that (b) payments through the account immediately ceased after a first negative assessment with no satisfactory explanation, and (c) that PO had not co-operated with further reasonable enquiries in relation to both O's father Eze and Eze CC, and as to why her sources of income had apparently ceased.”

That combination of evidence formed a rational basis to conclude that the assessing social worker could not be satisfied that PO and O were destitute, Helen Mountfield QC said.

She added: “In particular, Ms O was not truthful about the fact that her source of visible income from Eze CC and CO until March 2015 was work. If that was the case, and her work had stopped, she could have explained that to the social worker, or asked Eze CC to do so in a straightforward way. But she offered no satisfactory explanation for this.”

The deputy judge also rejected the second ground of challenge, namely to the rationality of Lambeth's conclusion that O and PO did not require accommodation because it was assessed that PO had access to a more extensive network of support available to her than she was prepared to disclose in the assessment and that people in that network could continue to accommodate her.

Helen Mountfield QC found that – for a combination of reasons – that this was a reasonable inference to draw. These were that:

1. The fact that PO had been assisted by friends with accommodation for the past five years since O's birth;


2. O's explanation that they sometimes stayed with the E family and "uncle Michael" which was apparently inconsistent with PO's case that she had not stayed at the E family household since Mrs E's death when O was only two years old;


3. Michael E's failure to respond to enquiries, and Ms J's failure to respond to further enquiries (having co-operated with the first NRPF [No recourse to public funds] assessment);

4. The lack of explanation for why Ms J would not continue to accommodate PO and O which she had been doing at the time of the first assessment;


5. Lambeth's doubts as to PO's credibility in the light of her implausible initial account of why there had been, in April 2015, money in her account (which she has since admitted was untrue) and apparent inconsistencies in her evidence.


“Looking at the impugned NRPF assessment holistically, as I must, I find that there was adequately detailed and thorough enquiry, and that the conclusions which the assessing social worker drew from the fact of support previously having been available over a long time; gaps and inconsistencies in the evidence; and lack of explanation for the sudden withdrawal of this support cannot be castigated as irrational,” the deputy judge said, dismissing the application for judicial review.