Council ordered to reconsider homelessness status of convicted offender over failure to recognise intervening event

HHJ Karen Walden-Smith, sitting at Peterborough County Court, heard that Peter Court had brought the case under section 204 of part 7 of the Housing Act 1996.

He had lived in a house in Wisbech with his wife under an assured tenancy granted to them both by Clarion Housing Association.

Mr Court was in June 2022 convicted of sexual offending and jailed.

While he was in prison, Mrs Court died and Mr Court notified Clarion that he was unable to continue paying rent due to his wife’s death and his imprisonment.

He was later diagnosed with a tumour in his thoracic spine which resulted in surgery, and he became paralysed from the chest down and diagnosed as a permanent paraplegic.

Mr Court was due for release in October 2024 and Fenland wrote concerning its decision to accept the section 189B(2) duty to help resolve his homelessness.

But the council later sent a 'minded to’ letter that said he was intentionally homeless from his original home.

It stated: “You committed a criminal offence and was given a custodial sentence.  This lead to you being unable to make rent payments and requesting that your tenancy is terminated.”

The deliberate action relied upon was that “if you had not been convicted of a criminal offence and been incarcerated, there would have been no reason to have terminated [the tenancy].”

Fenland’s letter went on: “I have considered your representations and I conclude that your homelessness began at the point of being convicted of a criminal offence and going to prison. You terminating the tenancy is in consequence of your imprisonment.”

Mr Court argued that Fenland wrongly considered the issue of causation and that Fenland was wrong to determine his previous home was unsuitable because of its proximity to a school, which would conflict with his probation conditions.

He argued that even if his offending and custodial sentence meant that he could not reside near to a school, the decision maker failed to consider the proximate cause.

HHJ Walden-Smith said Mr Court’s case focussed on a failure by the decision maker to consider the 'intervening event’ of him becoming paraplegic and a wheelchair user.

She said: “I have no doubt that had the appellant not suffered from a cancerous growth on his spine which led to surgical intervention and paralysis, then the act of giving up his tenancy as a consequence of the term of custody being too long for him to keep up with the rental payments after the death of his wife, would have been an intentional act of homelessness.”

Fenland argued the surgery and consequential paraplegia, did not break the chain of causation.

But the judge said: “That, in my judgment, runs contrary to the determination of the Supreme Court in Haile v Waltham Forest with respect to the correct interpretation of the provisions contained in Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996.”

She said: “The consequence of the appellant’s paraplegia, and consequently being a wheelchair user, is that it cannot be said, in relation to his earlier offending behaviour, that if he had not carried out those deliberate acts of offending he would not have become homeless.  

“There has been an intervening operative event which the local authority has failed to recognise.”

HHJ Walden-Smith remitted the matter to Fenland for reconsideration, but dismissed two other grounds.

These concerned whether Fenland’s review was a breach of regulation 7(2) of the Homelessness (Review Procedure, etc) Regulations 2018 and whether Fenland failed to consider the public sector equality duty.

Mark Smulian