Just to note that the 10 joined bedroom tax Judicial Review claims (for initial details see our note) are listed for full hearing on Wednesday to Friday next week (15-17 May). The claims involve a range of challenges to the regulations involving disabled adults, disabled children and children unable to share rooms for other reasons.
More details as soon as we get them.… Read the full post
The detail of this may have passed you by at the time, it certainly did me, but amongst the wind and posturing of David Cameron’s ‘big speech’ in March on stopping immigrants from getting things from healthcare to driving licences was quite a significant snippet on the private rental sector.
You have probably already registered the proposals for what Cameron calls ‘state sector’ housing – presumably meaning social housing – which is to introduce statutory allocation guidance:
New migrants should not expect to be given a home on arrival. And yet at present almost one in ten new social lettings go to foreign nationals. So, I am going to introduce
London Borough of Brent v Tudor [2013] EWCA Civ 157
This was an appeal of a Circuit Judge’s finding that LB Brent’s possession claim under Ground 16, Schedule 2 Housing Act 1985 failed because the property was reasonably needed to accommodate those living there. Very unusually, the appeal was in large part a challenge to the Judge’s findings of fact.
Ms Tudor had succeeded to her mother’s tenancy of a six bedroom property. The mother had died in March 2009. Ms T had applied to succeed in July 2009 after Brent served an NTQ. She named four members of her family as living with her. The Council replied in August … Read the full post
The recent case of Birmingham CC v Beech contains a wealth of legal issues but sadly for the Defendant, none of them was decided in her favour. Mrs Beech’s parents had been joint tenants of a 3 bedroom property at 31 Tilshead Close, Birmingham since 1967. Mrs B’s father passed away in 1994 and her mother succeeded to the tenancy. Mrs B moved in to the property with her new partner in 2007 in order to provide care for her mother. Between 2008 and 2009, five offers of accommodation were made to Mrs B and these were refused for a variety of reasons. Mrs B’s request for her name to … Read the full post
Now that was a busy day on the Bedroom Tax front, complete with a parliamentary statement, new DWP Guidance to Local Authorities, rumours and conjecture.
Let us start with the definite bits.
The new Guidance on disabled children unable to share a bedroom. The text of the guidance, HB/CTB U2/2013 is at the end of this post, in full. The upshot is that the DWP is withdrawing its appeal against Burnip (or specifically against the finding in Gorry, the linked case) and accepts that LHA and Housing Benefit should pay for an ‘additional’ bedroom where that bedroom is required because of a child’s disability preventing them from sharing … Read the full post
Disabled children – “exempt” from the bedroom tax?
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday [6 March 2013] David Cameron claimed that “anyone with severely disabled children is exempt from the spare room subsidy”, more commonly known as the “bedroom tax”. Leaving to one side the semantics around the changes to housing benefit due in April (the official title is the “social sector under-occupancy penalty”), this would be a welcome exception indeed. Unfortunately it doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. The Government is in fact fighting tooth and nail through the courts to ensure that no such exemption applies.
Discrimination
Under the new regulations which come into force in April, tenants in … Read the full post
Just a quick post to note that a Judicial Review of the bedroom tax regulations was apparently issued on Friday 1 March 2013. From this report, it appears that the grounds are along the lines of Burnip, as I suggested here, in that the basis is discrimination against children not able to share a bedroom through disability, with the addition of arguing that some are unable to share a bedroom 'because they are at risk of violence from a sibling, or because of the trauma they have experienced as a result of abuse and domestic violence'.
The cases are apparently being run by Rebekkah Carrier of Hopkin … Read the full post
