Homelessness roundup

Catherine Rowlands rounds up of some of the most important Court of Appeal rulings this year in the homelessness field.

2015 has seen a bumper crop of homelessness cases, but what with Hotak, Johnson and Kanu, Nzolameso and Haile in the Supreme Court, you may have overlooked some less dramatic but no less interesting cases in the Court of Appeal. They resolve some questions of statutory interpretation about the interrelationship of other duties that local authorities owe to those in, seeking, or losing social housing.

One of the features of these decisions is the recognition by the Court of the strains that the current atmosphere of austerity is placing on those at the bottom of the housing scale, and those attempting to assist them.

Firoozmand v Lambeth LBC [2015] EWCA Civ 952

An interesting appeal against the suitability of accommodation offered to a homeless applicant, which concerned an Iranian who had been granted asylum and who had mental health problems which made him less tolerant to noise from neighbours. He specifically said that he did not want to be accommodated in a hostel, but, being a single man, and not in priority need, this was what was offered to him. He alleged that dampness in the flat aggravated his mental health problems and relied on the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. He appealed on the basis that the council should have carried out an assessment under the HHSRS before offering him the hostel accommodation.

The Court of Appeal rejected the suggestion that there was a general duty to carry out assessments before any offer of accommodation, or even when there was a complaint about the standard of accommodation already offered, whilst accepting that the HHSRS could be relevant in certain individual cases, if the local authority did not think that it had sufficient information about the condition of the property. It would be only if the local authority irrationally found that it had sufficient information when any reasonable local authority would have carried out such an assessment that this would be a ground for challenge. The attempt to broaden out the application of the HHSRS failed.

Lambeth were represented by Wayne Beglan of Cornerstone Barristers.

Mohamoud v Kensington and Chelsea RLBC [2015] EWCA Civ 780

This case concerned the interplay of the Housing Act 1996 and the Children Act 2004 section 11. Where an applicant with dependent children has been found to be intentionally homeless, what is the impact of section 11 of the Children Act 2004?

On the appellants’ side, it was contended that local authorities are required to have proper arrangements in place to ensure that their officers treat the best interests of children as a primary consideration whenever they discharge their local authority functions, and must conduct a Children Act assessment of any children effected before deciding to evict their parents from temporary accommodation, once the council had decided that it did not owe the main housing duty.

The Respondent local authorities successfully argued that the Children Act duty was “simply an overarching strategic obligation, giving rise to no individually enforceable rights”. Lady Justice Sharp showed an admirable grasp of the reality of the burdens on those assisting the homeless when she said at paragraph 68:

"68 Standing back for a moment, if the respondents were required to engage in an assessment of children in homelessness cases ..., this would be extraordinarily burdensome in terms of cost and resources and – in the overwhelming number of cases — simply futile. As outlined above, the law already caters for the position of children, it allows for the assessment of proportionality at various stages, it has built into it various periods when any particular facts can be raised which might (in the most exceptional case) bear on the proportionality of an eviction, and mandate a temporary halt of the process, and the legislation, together with the procedural protections available to protect the article 8 rights engaged, provide for such matters to be independently assessed by a court. Hard pressed social workers would be diverted from their vital child protection work in relation to children in need as defined by the legislation, to conduct thousands of child assessments on the off chance that there were exceptional facts, of which the local authority which had already conducted a detailed review of the parent's circumstances was, as yet, unaware, and the parent did not think to raise with the local authority him or herself. If the appellants' argument are correct, then one child might be the subject of any number of such assessments (presumably these would then be required further back into the process). There is moreover an existing duty on the part of local authorities to conduct a Children Act assessment in respect of any child in need, whose parent is likely to lose their accommodation; and local housing authorities and children's services/departments are under a duty to co-operate in any event: see section 10 of the 2004 Act and section 27 of the 1989 Act."

Johnston v City of Westminster [2015] EWCA Civ 554

Mr Johnston – that’s Johnston with a t, just to differentiate him from the Johnson in the vulnerability appeal – was found not to be homeless by Westminster. He had applied as homeless to Westminster in 2011; they had found that he had a local connection with Eastbourne, who had accepted a duty to him. He appealed, and Westminster agreed to take a fresh application from him. This time, they held that given that Eastbourne were willing to accommodate him, he was not homeless. Mr Johnston objected to this on the grounds that any accommodation that Eastbourne might be willing to offer was speculative and hypothetical. This aspect of his appeal was upheld. The mere fact that another local authority might offer accommodation does not mean that the applicant is not homeless; he does not in fact have accommodation. However, Mr Johnston’s appeal failed on the basis that once Eastbourne had accepted its duty to him, Westminster’s duty had come to an end.

Catherine Rowlands is a barrister at Cornerstone Barristers. She can be contacted on 020 7242 4986 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..