The Court of Appeal's judgment in Heald and others v LB Brent [2009] EWCA Civ 930 is just out concerning the outsourcing of s 202 Housing Act 1996 reviews by Brent to Minos Perdios' company Housing Reviews Ltd. There have been a number of County Court...
Addendum to Homelessness CoG…
DCLoG have put out supplementary guidance to local authorities on intentional homelessness in the context of applicants who face homelessness following difficulties with mortgage commitments. I suspect if you look hard enough, you'll find it, but it's not...
Not just suitable but properly so
Araya, R (on the application of) v Leeds City Council [2009] EWHC 1962 (Admin) S.188 Housing Act 1996 accommodation, provided pending s.184 decision or s.202 review of a negative s.184 decision, must be 'suitable'. This means that any accommodation to which...
Support and suitability
Abdullah v City of Westminster [2007] EWCA Civ 1566 is not a new case. In fact it is two years old, but the transcript of the Court of Appeal judgement has only just come out (and it isn't on Bailii). So we'll do a brief note. The case was a second appeal...
Not reasonable but suitable
Not for the first time, I (and I suspect others) have been completely wrong-footed by Baroness Hale. It would be fair to say that the House of Lords judgment in the joined appeals in Birmingham v Ali and Moran v Manchester [2009] UKHL 36 has come as...
House of Lords Newsflash
A full report on Birmingham v Ali and Moran v Manchester [2009] UKL 36 will follow in due course, but for those of you who simply can't wait for your fix of House of Lords homelessness judgments, the headline is that both appeals are allowed to limited...
The Lords on Aweys coming soon
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...