Court of Appeal hears appeal by council over High Court determination of suitability of accommodation

The respondent had applied to the High Court to challenge Birmingham’s decision on her application for accommodation.

She won there but Lord Justice Lewis granted permission to appeal to Birmingham on four of six grounds argued.

HHJ Rawlings had ruled in the High Court that Birmingham was in breach of a duty to secure accommodation for the respondent and her household, which included her disabled brother.

He made a declaration to that effect and a mandatory order requiring Birmingham to secure suitable accommodation for the respondent and her household by 18 December 2025.

But he granted Birmingham permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal on two grounds. These were that the question of need for, and suitability of, accommodation should have been dealt in a review and then by an appeal to the county court under section 202-204 of the 1996 Act.

The second concerned whether the duty would come to an end when the respondent left the premises provided and went to another property.

Lewis LJ had six grounds of appeal before him, which he remarked “are not always easy to understand”.

He said four grounds had a realistic chance of success before the Court of Appeal, all of which “essentially argue that if the High Court was entitled to consider questions of suitability or questions of discharge, rather than those matters having to go to the county court pursuant to t section 204 of the Act, then the judge should have considered whether the [council] in its decision-making process had made a public law error, in deciding whether the accommodation was suitable or whether the duty had been discharged”.

The core argument, he said, was that the judge should not have determined questions of suitability or duty on his view the merits of the accommodation and the needs of the respondent.

Mark Smulian