Birmingham City Council v Qasim and others [2009] EWCA Civ 1080 may come as something as a surprise (at least, it did to me) and has rather a lot to say about the importance of allocation schemes under Pt 6, Housing Act 1996. Birmingham had an employee who...
Welcome to the High Court …
Welcome, Kenneth Parker QC, to the High Court. In a case which has more of the surreal about it, Kenneth Parker QC, sitting then as a Deputy Judge, had to decide whether to grant leave to a litigant in person to challenge Octavia Housing and Care's...
Allocations: Risk v Need
In R(M) v Hackney LBC [2009] EWHC 2255 (Admin), Cranston J was faced with a difficult case which "... raises the issue of reconciling individual rights with the rights of the community". The rights concerned were the Claimant's rights to an allocation of a...
Without exception
R (Joseph) v LB Newham [2008] EWHC 1637 (Admin) Blanket policies are unlawful. A first year law undergraduate could tell you that. Any lawyer or public body which didn't know that would deserve public humilliation, probably involving being slapped across the...
HLPA Conference
The Housing Law Practitioners Association ("HLPA") host their annual conference on December 15, 2009 at the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Details have just been released (with more to follow later in September) and can be found at...
Draft Allocations Code of Guidance
DCLoG which, by all accounts, was cockahoop over Ahmad has issued a new draft Code of Guidance on allocations for consultation: Fair and Flexible. This amends parts of the 2002 Code and the 2008 Code on CBL. The new draft Code is obviously aimed at...
Allocations policies: Publication
In R (Boolen) v Barking and Dagenham LBC reported on Lawtel, the Claimant applied for judicial review of the the council's allocation scheme on the basis that (1) the council had implemented a "local connection" criterion into its prioritisation decisions...
Arm's length discrimination (or not)
Odham's Walk Residents Management Ltd v Westminster City Council [2009] EWHC 1712 (Admin) is not a housing case per se, but is of interest. The applicant, a TMO, manages an estate of Westminster's housing stock as Westminster's agents under contract. The...
The good, the bad and the aesthetically challenged
'Building Britain's Future', a broad Government policy direction document, has been put out and must be regarded as an early draft of the Labour election manifesto. As people may well have heard, social housing and the allocation thereof features in the...
Searching around …
NL set a kind of challenge. There hasn't been anything interesting I could find, but there is a kind of footnote to allocations by way of a circular issued by CLG under section 169, Housing Act 1996, to honour a commitment made to members of the armed...
Ahmad: the cup's half empty
As they say in American tv shows: ohmigod. R(Ahmad) v LB Newham [2009] UKHL 14 is now available and the Lords have done a pretty good job at destroying the jurisprudence built up by the High Court and Court of Appeal in Part 6 cases. The headlines are: (a)...
Allocations and Homelessness amendments
Before the excitement of Ahmed tomorrow, there are two legislative developments to note. Firstly, the Allocation of Housing and Homelessness (Eligibility) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2009, SI 2009/358, has just been published. It waives the requirement...