High Court quashes refusal of council to award health and independence points to claimant bidding for properties on housing register

Deputy High Court Judge Eleanor Grey KC found in her judgment that claimant MG succeeded in some aspects of his claim that RBKC’s written decision confirming its refusal of his application for health and independence points under Part 6 of the Housing Act 1996 were unlawful.

Being awarded points would entitle him to a degree of priority in bidding for properties on the council’s housing register.

Permission was granted on two grounds. The first that RBKC failed to consider the compounding and cumulative effects of the claimant's health conditions and that the decision as a whole was Wednesbury unreasonable or irrational.

MG is an assured tenant in a flat in the borough owned by a housing association.

He argued that since moving to the flat, his ability to work, sleep and recover has been progressively destroyed by the conditions in the property and the physical and psychiatric harm these have resulted in.

His application for health and independence points included claims that he had autism and was bipolar.

MG complained he had been “sleep deprived ever since I moved in and I can no longer live like this” as this situation had worsened his symptoms. He added that he had been a victim of domestic abuse.

The RBKC housing health and disability team carried out an assessment and the application was refused. MG requested a review but the council maintained its refusal.

He submitted to the court that RBKC addressed his conditions in isolated, artificial compartments and nowhere addressed how those conditions interact with one another, or how they were cumulatively worsened by the physical structure of the flat. He said that this siloed approach was an error of law.

Eleanor Grey KC said: “Under the [council’s] scheme and in law, [MG’s] circumstances, including any particular vulnerabilities, needed to be considered holistically as part of the assessment of whether the evidence established a ‘severe, long-term and detrimental deterioration in [any specific health] condition as a direct result of your home…’

“Specifically, the likelihood of mental health crises or deterioration….being triggered by the conditions in the flat had to be assessed against all the background conditions set out in the medical evidence….. In my view, the decision letter does not demonstrate that any risk assessment was based on that approach.”

The Deputy High Court judge also accepted the decision-making process was unlawful “insofar as it failed to demonstrate, in the reasons given, that the medical evidence of [MG’s] vulnerability to the ‘stressors’ in the flat, and of the seriousness of the potential impact and any deterioration in health, had been properly considered and taken into account.”

She said a general statement that the evidence did not reach the required threshold, was not sufficient “to demonstrate that the medical evidence had been properly considered”.

The judge rejected the irrationality grounds but said RBKC’s decision would be quashed, and should be reconsidered .

She warned MG though that “the quashing of this decision for errors of law, and a requirement that any decision should follow the guidance set out in this decision, does not pre-judge the decision which the defendant may make on the merits, following reconsideration of the evidence”.

MG, a litigant in person, was awarded almost £6,000 in costs.

Mark Smulian