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Supreme Court orders Croydon Council: fulfil your legal duties

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Residents’ rights: protestors from Housing Action outside the Supreme Court for the hearing in May

By STEVEN DOWNES

The Supreme Court yesterday threw out Croydon Council’s defence, after a case brought by a homeless disabled woman finally reached the conclusion that the local authority really does have to deliver on its statutory responsibilities, however badly managed the council might be.

Wheelchair-bound Croydon mother Ruba Imam has been trying, since 2014, to get Croydon Council to provide her with accommodation suitable for the needs of her three children and herself.

Yet, rather than do what it is legally supposed to do, Croydon Council – under three different chief executives, countless heads of housing and three different political administrations – opted to squander potentially millions of pounds of public money on a legal case which it eventually lost in the highest court of the land.

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

Imam’s case had been taken up by Crisis, the homelessness charity, and some pro bono lawyers. After she won her case at the Court of Appeal, the council opted to prolong the agony – and expense – and took the case to the Supreme Court.

That hearing in early May was before Law Lords Lloyd-Jones, Sales, Leggatt, Richards and Burnett. Yesterday, they handed down a unanimous judgement against Croydon Council.

The 29-page judgement can be found here.

Basically, all local authorities are required, under Section 193(2) of the Housing Act 1996, to ensure that suitable housing is available to a person who is eligible for assistance.

Croydon admitted it had failed to fulfil its duty under the law, “but contends that by reason of severe budgetary constraints and limits to the stock of properties available for housing assistance it ought not to be ordered to provide a property to Ms Imam, suitable for her complex needs, with immediate effect.

“Croydon says that at the very least it should be given a period of grace to allow it to find a suitable property out of its limited resources.” Awww. Poor Croydon Council…

The council’s very well-paid solicitors, Browne Jacobson, with a KC and assistant in court, all paid for from the borough’s Council Tax, made this piss-poor argument that it needed more time some eight years after Imam’s housing provision had been admitted as unsatisfactory.

As the Appeal Court found last year, “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.

The Supreme Court laid out the facts of the case 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.

Money no object: despite overseeing a bankrupt council, CEO Katherine Kerswell must have approved taking case to the Supreme Court

“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.”

But still the council, and its legal team, thought it would be a good idea to take the matter 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.

Croydon Council, or rather the Council Tax-payers of the borough, could now be expected to pick up hefty bills for the costs of Imam’s legal team.

According to Imam’s civil rights lawyers at Doughty Street Chambers, “It is the first case on the issue of mandatory relief in public law proceedings to be heard by the Supreme Court, or any UK court.

“It considered when and how a court should make an order to enforce a local authority’s duty to secure suitable accommodation when it in in breach. The case therefore goes to the heart of individuals’ ability to give meaningful effect to their rights and entitlements under the homelessness provisions of the Housing Act 1996.

“Rejecting Croydon’s appeal the Supreme Court held that the court at first instance had been wrong to refuse a mandatory order on the basis of budgetary constraints of a generalised nature.

“The starting point was that Croydon is subject to a public law duty imposed by Parliament by statute which is not qualified in any relevant way by reference to the resources available to Croydon.

Pro bono: Martin Westgate KC, of Doughty Street Chambers, who made the case for Imam

“In principle, if resources are inadequate to comply with a statutory duty it is for the authority to use whatever powers it has to raise money or for central government to adjust the grant given to the authority to furnish it with the necessary resources, or for Parliament to legislate to remove the duty or to qualify it by reference to the resources available.

“For constitutional reasons to do with the authority of Parliament, the general position is that where Parliament imposes a statutory duty on a public authority to provide a specific benefit or service, it does so on the footing that the authority must be taken to have the resources available to comply with that duty.

“It is not for the court to examine the position with a view to possibly arriving at a contrary conclusion. Nor is a court entitled to dilute a clear statutory duty by reference to its own view of the resources available; nor may it absolve an authority in any general way from complying with such a duty by reason of the insufficiency (in the court’s opinion) of the resources available to it.”

So there.

‘Croydon’s housing service has not been good enough’

Yesterday, Browne Jacobson issued a statement which tried to claim that the Justices’ judgement was in some way a vindication.

Browne Jacobson, or “BJ” as they are known in some legal quarters, actually employ someone whose job title is described as “Senior PR Executive”, whose wages are paid, in part at least, by Croydon Council Tax. Which is nice.

It was they who sent out a press release yesterday in which BJ simpered: “Lord Sales… gave a landmark judgement giving clarity for local authorities and helping to stem the tide of claims for mandatory orders against those authorities.” Which is one way of looking at it…

Council lawyer: Victoria Searle, of council-funded Browne Jacobson

“The main housing duty is immediate, non-deferable, and unqualified. However, it is not a duty to provide accommodation immediately; it is a duty to secure accommodation with a reasonable period of time.” BJ’s emphasis. They fail to advise on the definition of “reasonable period of time”. Our guess is that nine years is not reasonable.

According to Victoria Searle, an associate at BJ: “This judgement will bring sighs of relief from many local authorities.”

That can only be a view if she, and her clients at Croydon Council, cling to the hope that the Supreme Court ruling that providing housing without being “unfair” to others on the waiting list might, in some way, justify keeping Imam and her family waiting for a suitable home for nearly a decade.

Inside Croydon put a series of questions to Croydon Council, including who has been responsible for the last two years for continuing to pursue this case to the Supreme Court?

We also asked whether anyone within the council will be facing any form of disciplinary action for continuing to pursue this case, or whether anyone has resigned from their jobs for their part in continuing to pursue this case.

We also invited Jason Perry to offer an explanation for why, in his time as Mayor since May 2022, he had allowed the council to continue this legal pantomime to try to escape from its legal duties.

We got no response from part-time Perry, but a spokesperson for Croydon Council said, ““We fully accept the findings of the judgement and apologise for the impact the situation has had on our resident.

“We are continuing to make every effort to secure alternative suitable accommodation as quickly as possible.

“Like other London boroughs, Croydon faces huge demand for homes, particularly where residents have complex needs. Given the shortage of suitable housing in London, this often means a difficult balance between the needs of our residents who are homeless and our current tenants who need alternative accommodation.

“We recognise that Croydon’s housing service in recent years has not been good enough.

“Whilst it will take time, we have introduced a detailed housing improvement plan to transform the service we provide our communities.”

Croydon Council has issued no press release of its own and published nothing on its own website about this “landmark” legal judgement, on which it spent so much public money pursuing. Funny that…

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