Council defeats High Court action over private sector housing enforcement policy
Hull City Council has seen off a challenge to its private sector housing enforcement policy brought by a local landlords’ association.
In R (Humber Landlords Association) v Hull City Council [2019] EWHC 332 (Admin) His Honour Judge Klein, sitting as a judge of the High Court, ruled the council had neither fettered its discretion nor acted irrationally.
In a commentary on the case, Cornerstone Barristers - whose Wayne Beglan and Alex Williams appeared for the local authority - said it arose when Hull changed a policy based on informal action against properties with hazards other than in exceptional cases, to one where the presumption was for formal action unless the hazard was insignificant or the landlord was a member of the council's accreditation scheme.
The council adopted the revised policy to combat retaliatory evictions.
Humber Landlords Association argued that the revised policy required the council to take formal action in most cases and that it had therefore misused its powers and fettered its discretion to take informal action.
It also claimed Hull had acted irrationally having failed to take sufficient account of statutory guidance, given unlawful weight to the hypothetical risk of retaliatory evictions without any analysis and had given unlawful weight to its own accreditation scheme.
Hull argued that the association had not read the policy correctly and said it retained discretion to take any appropriate action. The revised policy simply altered the council's starting point from informal to formal action.
HHJ Klein said properly construed the revised policy provided for formal action as the normal response to hazards but informal action remained an option if the council decided "having regard to all the circumstances of the case”.
There was therefore no fettering of discretion and the council had used its powers for the proper purpose of improving housing stock.
It was entitled to attach weight to landlords' membership of its accreditation scheme and had not given irrational weight to any relevant factors.
Cornerstone commented: “The judgment is of practical importance to all public authorities engaged in the drafting or revision of policies.
“It serves as a stark reminder of the court's central role in interpreting the policy and, in turn, the primacy of the policy itself. Claimants relying less on the words of the policy and more on individual council officers' summaries of it are unlikely to advance their cases very far.”
Mark Smulian
