News reaches us here at NL of a decision of the High Court (Birmingham District Registry) by the name of Mehari, Kelly and JI v Birmingham City Council (9 and 10 November 2009) given by Hickenbottom J. Details are sketchy and, as ever, we’d be grateful for any further information.
As we understand it, persons who apply for assistance to BCC are asked to complete a form relating to their reasons for leaving their previous accomodation. Unless BCC are satisfied that the person is at risk of harm in that accomodation, they don’t provide interim accomodation (i.e. they expect the applicant to go back to the previous accomodation).
His Lordship found that additional “risk of harm” aspect to be unlawful and declared that Birmingham City Council were “imposing an unlawful extra-statutory hurdle” to persons seeking to make an application for housing assistance under Part 7.
I know that some of BCC legal and housing are readers of this blog. I presume that CLP were involved with this for the applicants… anything any of you would care to share with the rest of us? :-)