It seems I wasn’t the only one frantically getting cases progressed before the holiday break. The Court of Appeal has been churning out judgments at an extraordinary rate.
Amongst them one housing law judgment…
Green & Anor v London Borough of Croydon [2007] EWCA Civ 1367. This was an appeal on a homeless application. Briefly, there had been a somewhat iffy possession order, made where the actual rent due and owing was not clear at all. The Local Authority had even advised the appellants on the iffyness of the claim. However, a ground 8 possession order was made and the Council then returned an intentionally homeless s.184 decision on the subsequent homeless application.
The basis of the appeal was that the Council’s inquiries had not gone far enough, or at all, into whether the possession order was soundly based or should have been made at all.
The Court of Appeal held that ‘such inquiries as are neccessary’ in the terms of s.184, in circumstances such as this where the County Court had made a decision as to what the rent was on the basis of mixed and uncertain evidence, need not take place, although the situation may be different where the County Court decision was ‘clearly’ wrong. This was not a boundary testing case. Appeal dismissed.
Bad luck to Flack & Co on this one.