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Council’s lawyers take case all the way to Supreme Court in attempt to deny disabled mother her legal housing rights

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A team of highly paid lawyers representing cash-strapped Croydon Council returned to the Supreme Court this morning for an appeal hearing that the authority has brought against a disabled woman and her three children. Yes…

“Despite going bankrupt, Croydon Council are happy to use public money for a legal challenge to harm the most vulnerable in their borough and beyond,” said a member of Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth, an organisation which together with some pro bono legal firms has been providing support for Ruba Imam, the woman at the centre of the case.

The homelessness charity, Crisis, has acted as the intervener on behalf of Imam, a mother and wheelchair user, who won their appeal case against Croydon, as local housing authority, for keeping them in temporary and unsuitable accommodation for longer than the legal limits.

The council decided that Imam’s temporary accommodation was unsuitable as long ago as June 2015. She was still stuck in the same unsuitable accommodation 12 months ago, almost seven years later, when her case reached the Appeal Court.

As the Appeal Court found last year, “The sole issue… concerns the circumstances in which a court may in the exercise of its discretion properly refuse a mandatory order to enforce a duty owed under Section 193(2) [of the Housing Act 1996].

“The local housing authority, the London Borough of Croydon… accepted that it was in breach of its duty as it had failed to secure that suitable accommodation was available for occupation by the respondent, Mrs Imam.” Our italics, for emphasis.

Appearing at the Appeal Court last year were lawyers representing Birmingham City Council, fighting similar cases. Having lost then, Birmingham has not pursued their case any further.

Residents’ rights: protestors from Housing Action outside the Supreme Court yesterday

Yet bungling, cash-strapped Croydon has now gone to considerable trouble, and huge expense – advised by expensive external solicitors Browne Jacobson – by taking the matter to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court case is being heard by Justices Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Sales, Lord Leggatt, Lord Richards and Lord Burnett, and is expected to conclude today, with the judgement unlikely to be handed down for some weeks yet.

As the Supreme Court website lays out the matter to be determined: “When should a court make a mandatory order against a local housing authority to enforce a duty owed to a homeless individual under S193(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (the “1996 Act”)?

“In particular, should the court take account of either: (a) budgetary constraints imposed on the housing authority; or (b) the availability of housing under a non-secured tenancy under Part VII of the 1996 Act (as opposed to a secured tenancy under Part VI of the 1996 Act).”

The Supreme Court lays out the facts as:

“The respondent is disabled within the meaning of S6 of the Equality Act 2010. The appellant, a local housing authority, has provided the respondent housing since 2014. The appellant accepts that (a) the property provided is not suitable accommodation, within the meaning of the 1996 Act; and (b) it is in breach of S193(2) of the 1996 Act by not offering suitable alternative accommodation.” Again, our italics.

“The respondent judicially reviewed the appellant’s failure to provide suitable alternative accommodation. In the High Court, the Deputy Judge declined to exercise his discretion to award a mandatory injunction to require the appellant to provide suitable alternative accommodation.

“In the Court of Appeal, this decision was overturned on the basis that the Deputy Judge had wrongly taken into account budgetary constraints imposed on the local housing authority in the exercise of his discretion and in the analysis of the steps taken by the authority to fulfil its statutory duty.

“The appellant…”, that’ll be tax-funded Croydon Council, which has already admitted that it has failed to provide suitable accommodation and has acted in breach of the Housing Act, “…now appeals to the Supreme Court.”

It seems very likely that the decision to continue to pursue this case, when the council has already admitted that it is in the wrong, will have been sanctioned by Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense, Croydon’s senior legal official, and backed up by Katherine Kerswell, the £192,474 per year chief executive, and signed off by the borough’s Tory Mayor, Jason “Mr 15per cent” Perry.

A volunteer with the Housing Action group told Inside Croydon, “The council seem to be trying to argue that if they can’t find anything due to lack of resources, or their terrible finances, then nothing can be done and they should be allowed to leave homeless families in accommodation they have found to unsuitable indefinitely.

“Croydon’s arguments could severely undermine homeless families’ rights. If Croydon win the case in the Supreme Court then they will have a licence to treat all homeless families like this.”

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