High Court rejects £600k harassment and unlawful eviction claim brought by homeless man against council and housing contractor

A High Court judge has dismissed a claim for £600,000 in damages brought by a man who is homeless and stateless against the London Borough of Haringey and its housing contractor.

The judge was though strongly critical of the way the council and its housing contractor Capital Homes Services acted in the case at Central London County Court. Capital was engaged by Haringey to source short-term accommodation.

His Honour Judge Luba QC said in his judgment [published this week on Bailii] the case was a claim for damages arising from alleged harassment in, and then alleged unlawful eviction from, residential accommodation.

The claimant asserted he was a secure tenant or licensee of Haringey and that it was liable for damages of up to £600,000 for his wrongful harassment and eviction.

Alternatively, he contended he was the assured shorthold tenant of Capital Homes Services and it was liable for the damages.

The claimant had earlier applied for an interim injunction to restrain a perceived threatened unlawful eviction, which was granted by a court but soon after discharged by HHJ Saunders, who found the claimant had not entered into a legal relationship with either the council or Capital.

HHJ Luba said the claimant lost accommodation in May 2020 when he was arrested following an allegation made by another resident, and began sleeping rough.

He was though housed under the ‘Everyone In’ policy for rough sleepers then prevailing due to the pandemic.

In the first of his criticisms of the case’s conduct, HHJ Luba noted: “It is somewhat surprising, given the issues arising in this litigation, the notional value of the claim, and the costs at stake in determining it, that none of the parties sought to place before the court the witness evidence of any councillor or council officer as to the arrangements the council had in place, whether pre-pandemic or in response to Everyone-In, to secure accommodation for rough sleepers. If the council adopted a specific policy or procedure, I was not shown it.”

There had been lengthy confusion and disputes between the claimant, the council and Capital over whether he was living in his allocated accommodation with the council’s permission after his initial term there expired.

HHJ Luba said: “My inability to accept [the claimant’s] account on these matters springs not from any belief that he was misleading the court.

“Rather, as he and those advising him accepted, he suffers from memory loss…I believe his evidence is simply muddled and confused.”

He was sent a termination of occupation letter in May 2020 but remained in the flat even after HHJ Saunders discharged the injunction.

The claimant then stayed at a Travelodge until August 2020 before moving to accommodation arranged by the Home Office for refugees.

Turning to his further concerns about the case, HHJ Luba said “for no good reason”, a witness statement that partially corroborated [the claimant’s] account from a housing contract supervisor - who formerly advised him through legal aid - “was accompanied by a Civil Evidence Act Notice indicating that he would not be called because he had left his former firm”.

HHJ Luba said the supervisor was “obviously readily contactable” but when he did appear “gave his oral evidence without any access to the office mobile phone which held the records of his telephone, text and WhatsApp exchanges with [the claimant] and others back in May 2020.”

He added: “He should not have been placed in this situation and the court should have been better assisted in this respect.”

The judge said the conduct of Haringey and Capital was also “less than helpful to the court” and found it “extraordinary how much of the case was being ‘patched up’ as the trial went along”.

He said: “However, this judgment does demonstrate how little attention is given by some local authorities and some accommodation suppliers to the legal implications of the agreements they enter into with each other and the arrangements they make (or one of them makes) with the ultimate occupiers of temporary accommodation.

“The cases of the parties to these proceedings are pleaded in alternatives given the uncertainties as to how the law might apply to the relatively commonplace events I have described above.

“As is so often the case in this subject area, the legal waters are further muddied by agency arrangements and, as the present case illustrates, by sub-agency arrangements.” 

Dealing with the substance of the claim, HHJ Luba rejected the case against Haringey and Capital.

He concluded the pleaded incidents “get nowhere near amounting to a course of conduct constituting harassment for the purposes of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

“At their highest, they amount to [the claimant] being firmly encouraged to agree to accept a voluntary move from his present accommodation to alternative accommodation better suited to the provision of the support and assistance he would need. In due course, that is precisely what he voluntarily did.”

Mark Smulian