Judge left unconvinced by review on impact of ‘local ties’ policy on Travellers

The London Borough of Hillingdon failed to demonstrate that it properly considered the impact on Irish Travellers when it set a housing policy favouring people with local ties, the High Court has found.

Rowena Collins-Rice, sitting as a Deputy High Court judge, said the case raised issues of “the fair reconciliation of a housing policy favouring people with established local ties, with the needs of those for whom that may present particular difficulties”.

Hillingdon’s policy only allows those resident in the borough for 10 years to join the housing register.

The case arose over the housing offered to an Irish Traveller ‘TW’ and her three children, but this was resolved by an offer of a more suitable home.

However, TW was not satisfied Hillingdon was properly prioritising her family. In the summer of 2018 she challenged the lawfulness of Hillingdon’s handling of her case.

Mr Justice Supperstone in the High Court declared that in some respects the allocation policy that Hillingdon was applying to TW was unlawful.

By middle of November 2018, however, TW had still not been rehoused and so she began this set of judicial review proceedings.

Hillingdon’s housing policy and strategy manager said in a witness statement that after Supperstone J's ruling she had reviewed the 2016 allocation policy as it affected Irish Travellers and concluded that the residence provisions were a proportionate means of achieving Hillingdon's legitimate policy aim of rewarding long-term attachment to the borough.

In TW, R (On the Application Of) (No.2) v London Borough of Hillingdon [2019] EWHC 157 (Admin) Judge Collins-Rice said she had to decide whether the 2018 officers' review provided sufficient evidence that Hillingdon had assessed the extent of the disadvantageous impact of the residence requirement on Irish Travellers and their children, in practice. Only if it had done so could the judge then consider whether such disadvantage was proportionate.

She added: “To be able to justify an adverse impact [on Irish Travellers], it is necessary to be able to describe it and to understand it with reasonable sufficiency in the first place. I cannot read the 2018 officers' review as a sufficient attempt to describe and understand the impact of its policy on Irish Travellers. Its conclusions are to that extent insufficiently supported.

"Sufficiency might be able to be relatively easily attained by quick and simple recourse to accessible expert advice and information, and to such relevant information of its own as is also accessible. If not, then the exercise of exhausting these routes, or otherwise demonstrating the level of active and concerned curiosity of which the decision in TW (no.1) should surely have put Hillingdon on notice as being appropriate, may suggest other perspectives on the issue."

The judge confirmed that Supperstone J’s declarations last year continued in force.

Mark Smulian