CROYDON IN CRISIS: The cash-strapped council paid a single firm of solicitors £2m over a two-year period. Now it has been forced to admit that it spent another chunk of public money in pursuing a housing case in which they had admitted they were in the wrong – in 2014.
EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
The lawyers’ friend: the cash-strapped council’s £192,000 per year CEO Katherine Kerswell
Between 2022 and 2023, cash-strapped Croydon Council paid a firm of external solicitors almost one-quarter of a million pounds, all on a single legal case that they had already lost in the courts.
Inside Croydon reported the outcome of the landmark case of R (Imam) v London Borough of Croydon in November, after the council had taken the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.
Ruba Imam is a wheelchair user and mother of three. She and her family have been living in accommodation which in October 2014 – almost 10 years ago – Croydon Council accepted was unsuitable.
Yet while lawyers for the council went to the Supreme Court making the case that the authority did not have the financial means to meet its legal duty to provide suitable housing for Imam, it was paying barristers and solicitors a total of £305,038.31 to run its doomed case for it.
The manner in which Croydon Council, under chief executive Katherine Kerswell, has conducted this case, and others, has similarities to the Post Office’s now notorious approach to the sub-postmasters over the dodgy Horizon IT system.
The council, like the Post Office, has tried to “game” the courts, running down the clock while running up the expenses of those who are contesting the litigation, while in the meantime throwing out threats of potentially deeply damaging costs, possibly in the hope that the litigant will withdraw when they run out of funds.
In the money: Browne Jacobson have been doing very well from having Croydon Council as a client
Ruba Imam was fortunate, because she had the backing of a national homelessness charity, Crisis, and the heft of Doughty Street Chambers, a renowned pro bono practice, behind her.
Twelve months ago, Inside Croydon reported how the council had paid a single firm of solicitors more than £2million in the two years from when the authority first declared itself bankrupt, through until November 2022.
At a time when the council repeatedly claims that it does not have the money to deliver even the most basic of services, as we in 2022, lawyers from Browne Jacobson have been sitting-in as legal advisers to planning officials at the council’s fortnightly planning committee meetings for almost two years.
In the housing case of Imam, as the Appeal Court found in 2022, “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.
Other local authorities, such as Birmingham City Council, opted to withdraw from related proceedings after they lost in the Appeal Court in 2022.
Not Croydon.
Possibly after advice from Browne Jacobson (kerrr-ching!), Kerswell’s council took the matter all the way to the Supreme Court where, two months ago, five senior justices – Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Sales, Lord Leggatt, Lord Richards and Lord Burnett – ruled unanimously that it doesn’t matter how bankrupt a local council might be – the law is the law, and they must still fulfil their statutory duties.
The alternative as proposed by Croydon Council would be that the courts would be able to over-rule Parliament – seriously troubling and unconstitutional, even in a nation that has no written constitution.
As m’learned friends at Doughty Street put it: “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.
“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.
Residents’ rights: protestors from Housing Action outside the Supreme Court at the start of Ruba Imam’s case
“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.”
Inside Croydon wanted to know how much it had cost the Council Tax-payers of Croydon to discover, from five Supreme Court judges, that the council is expected to comply with the law.
The council reckons that Browne Jacobson “were only instructed in spring 2020 when proceedings were issued in the High Court by Ms Imam, so there were no legal costs prior to April 2020”.
They listed the costs, as paid to the external solicitors (goodness knows how much time and expense was being run-up in the legal department of Fisher’s Folly over this time) as:
2020 £42,221.16
2021 £17,643.60
2022 £94,389.88
2023 £150,783.67
Total: £305,038.31
It is arguable that the case ought to have been abandoned some time in 2020 or 2021. The money saved might have been used more usefully, like finding a suitable and properly adapted home for Imam and her family…
But lawyers advise, it is their clients who ultimately decide what course of action to take. Through most of 2022 and all of 2023, Kerswell was the council’s chief executive and the elected, executive Mayor was Jason Perry.
In answering Inside Croydon’s Freedom of Information request, the council claimed that “the Supreme Court hearing was essential to re-clarify the issue of resources when dealing with homelessness applications”. Yep, that’s right: they needed to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get a reliable legal opinion. Public money might be better spent finding better solicitors. Or executives.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, public bodies subject to FoI requests have 20 working days in which to provide a response. Inside Croydon’s request on this matter was submitted on November 28. That meant that, with all the Christmas and New Year bank holidays, Croydon Council had until December 30 to provide its response.
After reminders, Croydon Council finally came up with its answer on January 5.
Read more: Council’s lawyers take case all the way to Supreme Court in attempt to deny disabled mother her legal housing rights
Read more: A Christmas present to Croydon: another court victory
Read more: ‘You seem to be trying to put the genie back in the bottle’
Read more: How blind man took on the council – and won £66,000 in costs
Read more: Home owner’s victory after four-year battle with planners
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