Supreme Court finds for council over split accommodation for homeless

Local authorities are not precluded by the Housing Act 1996 from offering a homeless family two separate units of accommodation, the Supreme Court has ruled.

The case of Sharif (FC) (Respondent) v The London Borough of Camden (Appellant) [2013] UKSC 10 centred on sections 175 and 176 of the 1996 Act, and the duties of local housing authorities to provide accommodation to those who are or claim to be homeless or threatened with homelessness.

Under s. 175, a person is homeless if he has no accommodation “available for his occupation” in the UK or elsewhere. Section 176 states that accommodation is to be regarded as available for a person’s occupation only if it is “available for occupation by him together with any other person who normally resides with him as a member of his family, or any other person who might reasonably be expected to reside with him”.

Lord Cornwath, who gave the judgment for the majority of the Supreme Court, highlighted how the phrase ‘available for occupation’ was relevant not only to establishing whether a person was homeless under section 175, but also to identifying what duties a local authority owed to a person who was, or claimed to be, homeless.

The background to the case was that in 2004 Camden accepted that it owed a duty to Ms Sharif, her father (who had certain health problems) and her sister (aged 14) on the basis that she was homeless.

After spells in a hostel and then a house owned by a private sector landlord, Ms Sharif, her father and sister were asked in 2009 by Camden to move to two units on the same floor of a block of flats in north London. The units were separated only by a few yards.

The local authority proposed that Ms Sharif and her sister would live in one unit, with the father in another. But Ms Sharif rejected the offer, arguing that the accommodation was not “suitable” because her father’s medical condition required them to live in the same unit of accommodation.

Camden’s reviewing officer concluded that the accommodation was suitable.

Ms Sharif took the case to the London Central County Court, where she argued, amongst other grounds, that the accommodation was not ‘suitable’ and that s. 176 of the 1996 Act precluded Camden from offering Ms Sharif and her family two separate units of accommodation.

The claimant lost and did not appeal on the issue of suitability. However, the Court of Appeal did overturn the county court’s decision on the basis that the phrase ‘together with’ in s. 176 required the family to be housed in the same unit of accommodation.

Camden took the case to the Supreme Court, which by a majority ruled in the council’s favour (Lord Kerr dissenting).

Lord Cornwath said: “The statutory test will be satisfied by a single unit of accommodation in which a single family can live together. But it may also be satisfied by two units of accommodation if they are so located that they enable the family to live ‘together’ in practical terms.

“In the end….this comes down to an issue of fact, or of factual judgment, for the authority. Short of irrationality it is unlikely to raise any issue of law for the court.”

The judge acknowledged that this legal issue had not been addressed in terms by the review officer because it had not been raised in that form.

“However, it is reasonably clear how it would have been answered, since the issue of suitability was clearly treated as including the needs of the family as a unit,” Lord Cornwath added.

“The main obstacle to family living which had been raised was the problem of caring for the father in a separate unit. That was considered and discounted by the officer. He thought the two flats were sufficiently close for the problem of communication to be no greater than in a house on two levels.”

The judge said the arguments advanced on behalf of Ms Sharif would “produce surprising results”. These included that the council would not be able to improve the position of a homeless family residing in an overcrowded house or flat by offering them an additional neighbouring unit of accommodation, even on a temporary basis.

If it was accepted that two separate rooms in a hostel or hotel would satisfy the requirements of s. 176, it was hard to see why that should be treated differently from the provision of two adjacent flats, Lord Cornwath added.

Agreeing with Lord Cornwath, Lady Hale pointed out that there was no requirement under the 1996 Act for local housing authorities to provide a communal living space to those who were, or claimed to be, homeless.

“To require some communal living space is to impose a standard which is too high to expect local authorities to meet across the whole range of statutory provisions to which the ‘together with’ criterion applies, including the interim duty in section 188 of the 1996 Act,” she said.

Lord Cornwath stressed that the narrowness of the Supreme Court’s decision “does not give authorities a free hand”.

He said: “It is still a fundamental objective of the Act to ensure that families can ‘live together’ in a true sense. Accommodation, whether in one unit or two, is not ‘suitable’ unless it enables that objective to be achieved.”

Lord Hope added that the test was “not there to be exploited”, but must be applied reasonably and proportionately.

In his dissenting judgment, Lord Kerr, dissenting, said s. 176 did require a local housing authority to accommodate a homeless family in the same unit of accommodation.

He added: “If living together as a family is to mean anything, it must mean living as a distinct entity in a single unit of accommodation…. The accommodation must be of a character that will allow all members of the family to live within it.”

Lord Kerr also concluded that ‘sufficient proximity’was very different from ‘living together’.