Foreign national offender claimant wins legal challenge against Home Office over accommodation, but fails in parallel claim against council

The Home Office has lost a case about the allocation of bail accommodation for a foreign national offender and has been ordered by the High Court to make various changes to this system as well as pay 85% of claimant BLZ’s costs.

BLZ though lost a parallel claim for judicial review against Leeds City Council.

Mr Justice Fordham said in his judgment that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully by failing to provide BLZ with safe and suitable Home Office bail accommodation and failing to make reasonable adjustments to the process for sourcing and providing this accommodation for a disabled claimant, who had also been discriminated against by the failure to provide him with suitable accommodation as a consequence of his disability.

The Home Secretary was also found to have continued to accommodate BLZ in unsuitable accommodation in breach of an earlier order.

Fordham J also declared unlawful the Home Office’s lack of a written policy or instructions helping decision-makers to identify eligible care and support needs under the 2014 Care Act.

He also found breaches of the Public Sector Equality Duty, due to the absence of any system for collecting and monitoring data regarding the provision of bail accommodation to disabled persons and the absence of any equality impact assessment.

Fordham J issued a series of mandatory orders, the first of which required the Home Secretary to extend the system for collating and monitoring statistical data, so that it applies to all foreign national offenders including those in bail accommodation and to publish an equality impact assessment relating to the provision of Schedule 10 accommodation under the Immigration Act 2016.

The case concerned BLZ who was in June 2023 subject to an order made by Judge Cox at the First-Tier Tribunal granting immigration bail in principle on condition he lived at  an address arranged by the Home Office. Bail could not begin until this accommodation was provided.

BLZ felt the accommodation offered was unsuitable for a disabled person and so he could not safely live in it.

In the parallel case concerning BLZ’s application to Leeds, Fordham J found the council did not misdirect itself in law in taking account of accommodation provided by the Home Office when assessing BLZ’s eligible needs for care and support, and nor did it misdirect itself as to what constitutes ‘eligible needs’ ‘care and support’ and ‘accommodation-related’ needs within the meaning of the 2014 Act.

He concluded Leeds acted lawfully and reasonably and refused BLZ’s claim for judicial review.

Mark Smulian