News reaches us that the House of Lords opinions in the appeal of Aweys v Birmingham are to be handed down on 1 July (Court of Appeal report here). [Update, Moran v Manchester CC (our Court of Appeal report here) will also be handed down on the same day as...
Article 6, outsourced reviews and bias.
The outsourcing of s.202 Housing Act 1996 reviews by local authorities to private, commercial bodies came under scrutiny in Charlotte Augustin v London Borough of Barnet, Central London County Court, 22 May 2009 (no report available online yet). There are a...
Not interesting enough
McKenzie, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Waltham Forest [2009] EWHC 1097 (Admin) was a Judicial Review initially brought on grounds that the local authority refused to provide the claimant with temporary accommodation following her...
House of Lords newsflash
The House of Lords has today given its judgment in the case of R (G) v Southwark [2009] UKHL 26. We reported the Court of Appeal decision here. A fuller report will follow on Nearly Legal in due course, but as we may not finish it today the headlines are:...
Outsourced temporary accommodation
Many local authorities use private accommodation for temporary accommodation under Housing Act 1996 Part VII. This may be by an LA ALMO 'managing agency', on which more at another time, or by licence agreements with private agencies. One of the latter came...
Duty to provide rent-free accommodation?
R (Best) v Oxford City Council [2009] EWHC 608 (Admin), [2009] All ER (D) 252, noted on this week's Garden Court Housing Law Bulletin, but not yet on BAILII. This is a judicial review that essentially turned on whether a local housing authority has a duty...
An inconvenient problem
There were lots of good intentions behind the SI making clear that 16/17 year olds are in priority need (The Homelessness (Priority Need for Accommodation) (England) Order 2002 (SI 2002 /2051)). But as a few have pointed out in recent years, there might...
Who wants to know?
A very odd case was noted on Lawtel this morning - AB v Leicester City Council, Court of Appeal, 19.2.09. ([2009] EWCA Civ 192) AB had applied under Part 7, Housing Act 1996, to Leicester City Council ("Leicester") for assistance as a homeless person. It...
Housing waiting lists in Parliament
Yesterday the House of Commons debated a Conservative Party motion on housing waiting lists: That this House notes that social housing waiting lists have increased to a record 1.8 million families, over 4.5 million people, over the last 12 months; recognises...
Nelsonian ignorance
Iyekekpolor Ugiagbe is a dream appellant - or, rather, an appellant whose homelessness story is a dream for a neo-liberal Court of Appeal who allowed her appeal against Southwark's finding that she was intentionally homeless (Ugiagbe v Southwark LBC, [2009]...
We're not in Sparta any more.
The House of Lords Opinions in Holmes-Moorhouse v LB Richmond upon Thames [2009] UKHL 7 were handed down today. This concerned whether a shared residence order under s.8 Children Act 1989 meant that a child was 'reasonably expected' to be resident with both...
Applying under Part VII via Part VI
This is another decision of the Welsh Ombudsman, again concerning Conwy Council. Case 200702044 - Conwy County Borough Council. I don't propose to go into detail on the specifics of this matter - which principally concerned delay and muddle in dealing with...