Claimant secures £145k in damages from social landlord after unlawful eviction

The Central London County Court has awarded a man deprived of his tenancy by social landlord Notting Hill Genesis more than £145,000 even though he is in prison.

His Honour Judge Luba KC said the housing association had shown “a picture of hopeless muddle and seeming administrative and managerial incompetence”.

The claimant alleged unlawful eviction, whereas the landlord maintained his tenancy was lawfully ended by his surrender of it.

The claimant had lived in the flat since 2010 and in 2016 married his second wife, who moved in with him although the tenancy remained in the claimant's sole name.

In April 2017, two days before the birth of a second daughter, the claimant was arrested, remanded in custody and later convicted and sentenced to 22 years imprisonment.

HHJ Luba said the second wife and the daughter remained in the flat. She would become dependent on student finance and welfare benefits and would need financial help to cover the rent.

“This should not have caused any particular difficulty,” the judge said. “In some circumstances, where one spouse is unable to pay their rent, the other spouse may receive assistance to pay that rent through the housing benefit scheme or through the housing element of Universal Credit, despite the fact that the tenancy is not in their name.”

But the claimant was given the impression by a Notting Hill Genesis official that his wife could not receive such help towards the rent unless she was also a tenant.

After a lengthy period in which the claimant attempted from prison to add this wife as a joint tenant, the second wife received a letter from the landlord which said: “I understand that with Notting Hill Genesis clause and its written consent where an assignment to a person who would qualify as a successor to the tenancy, [the second wife]…will be given a new tenancy.”

HHJ Luba remarked in his judgment; “Quite apart from the confusing terms in which that is expressed, an assignment is of course – as any lawyer or professional housing manager would/should know – the antithesis of a ‘new tenancy'. It is the transfer of the existing 'old' one to one or more alternative tenants.”

The claimant and the second wife subsequently divorced but he continued to complain to the landlord, the Housing Ombudsman and others that he remained a tenant of his flat and in August 2021 asserted his name had been “removed unlawfully” from the tenancy.

The second wife had by then moved to another home and Notting Hill Genesis told the claimant’s solicitors that the flat "is now void and items that belong to the claimant have been left within the property”.

HHJ Luba said he had two competing cases before him. The claimant argued he was unlawfully evicted as his tenancy was not ended by him and he had simply tried to ensure that his second wife could get benefits paid to meet the rent on their home. If that meant adding her name to the tenancy, he was agreeable to that.

Notting Hill Genesis argued that the claimant's tenancy was ended by surrender by operation of law. It said he had offered his tenancy back to the landlord so it could grant a new tenancy to the second wife. The claimant had been removed from its records and the second wife substituted and nothing unlawful had occurred.

The judge said: “What one has, standing back, is a picture of hopeless muddle and seeming administrative and managerial incompetence at NHG.

“That is so, even though they were dealing with as commonplace a situation in social housing as one spouse continuing in occupation while the other, in whose name the tenancy is held, is temporarily absent. There is, to my mind, nothing unequivocal at all in the landlord's actions. What one has here is the exact opposite. A scenario of lack of clarity and confusion about what should be done and what was being done and why.”

HHJ Luba said he had “no hesitation in rejecting the contention that [the claimant] lost his tenancy by the operation of the principles of lawful termination” but rather lost it because Notting Hill Genesis wrongly deprived him of it and purported to let his flat to the second wife.

The claimant chose to seek recompense rather than reinstatement and was awarded £145,800.89.

Mark Smulian