Landlord and tenant – Secure tenancy – Possession – Appellant tenant appealing against finding that making false statement as to immigration status induced respondent local authority to grant secure tenancy – Whether statement inducing relevant tenancy – Whether statement capable of demonstrating whether appellant entitled to social housing – Appeal dismissed
The appellant arrived in the UK from Nigeria in September 1998. In about 1999, she was living with a friend at 112 Robert Street, London SE18 but had no tenancy. She applied to the respondent local authority to have her name placed on the housing list.
In February 2001, she completed a housing application form. Question 10 on the form was headed “immigration status” and asked whether anyone she had mentioned so far had lived outside the UK in the last five years. If she had answered “Yes” she would have been required to complete an asylum/immigration form. As the appellant had ticked the “No” box, she was not required to ask for an asylum/immigration form. She also incorrectly answered Question 15 by stating that she had lived in private rented accommodation in the UK from 1990 to 1999.
She was subsequently granted a secure tenancy of Robert Street under the Housing Act 1985. In 2005, she completed an amendment form when her two sons came to live with her. She was subsequently granted the tenancy of a property at 15 Jessup Close. The respondent subsequently brought a claim for possession under Ground 5 of Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1985. An issue arose whether the respondent was induced to grant the tenancy by a false statement knowingly or recklessly made by the appellant. The deputy district judge held that the respondent had been induced to grant the tenancy by the appellant’s false statement and granted an order for possession. The judge found that she only became eligible for social housing in September 2010 when she was granted indefinite leave to remain; and that her answer to question 10 on the 2001 form had induced the respondent to grant the tenancies. The appellant’s appeal to the county court was dismissed.
The appellant appealed contending that: (i) although the false statement in the 2001 form had induced the respondent to grant the Robert Street tenancy, it did not induce the Jessup Close tenancy, which was the relevant tenancy for the purposes of the claim for possession; (ii) alternatively, the false statement did not induce the grant of either tenancy because the answer to question 10 was not capable of demonstrating whether an applicant was entitled to social housing.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
(1) Whatever might have been the status of the application based on the 2001 form in the period between the grant of the Robert Street tenancy and the completion of the 2005 form, once the 2005 form was completed, seeking accommodation more appropriate to the larger family, there was a live application which the respondent had to consider. The application included the 2005 form but that was an amendment. It made no sense to look at the amendment in isolation from the form which it amended. It only made sense to look at the two forms together, not least because they shared a common reference number, and the 2005 form did not repeat the questions asked of the applicant in the 2001 form, in particular questions 10 and 15. The two forms together formed the factual basis on which the respondent was asked to grant a new tenancy.
(2) The appellant’s case was, in fact, founded on a quite different principle, namely that a false statement in an application could not, in law, be operative once a tenancy had been allocated on the basis of that application. There was, however, nothing in the scheme of allocation of social housing, or in authority, which led to such a surprising result. In the end, the question of what induced the grant of the Jessup Close tenancy was a question of fact for the district judge to decide.
(3) The court did not have to decide what really would have happened, but whether the false statement had played a real and substantial part, though not by itself a decisive part, in inducing the authority to act. It had to be one of the inducing causes. In considering inducement it was helpful to start by considering the materiality of the statement. A false statement of a material matter was likely to have induced the misrepresentee. The district judge applied that approach. There was no principle that prevented him from concluding that the materially false statement made in the 2001 form continued to operate on the respondent’s mind when it came to grant the Jessup Close tenancy: Waltham Forest London Borough Council v Roberts [2004] EWCA Civ 940; [2004] PLSCS 175 followed.
(4) The appellant argued that the false statement was not relevant to the grant of the tenancy because it failed to ask the right question. But that overlooked the context in which the false statements had been made. Question 10 was headed “Immigration Status”, so it was immediately made abundantly clear what purpose the respondent had in mind in asking it, namely to determine whether the applicant had the necessary status to be eligible for social housing. That purpose was reinforced by the specific attention that was drawn, immediately below the boxes, to the fact that answering the question in the affirmative would lead to the need to fill out an asylum/immigration form. It was therefore clear to any applicant that the answer to the question operated to trigger an investigation into immigration status. Answering the question in the negative avoided the need to fill in the further form which would obviously be concerned with eliciting further immigration details. There was thus ample basis to allow the judge to find that a correct answer to the question would have revealed that the applicant was not eligible for social housing, and that the answer to the question was highly material.
Richard Granby (instructed by Chris Alexander Solicitors, of Barking) appeared for the appellant; Emily Davies (instructed by Greenwich Royal London Borough Council) appeared for the respondent.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
Click here to read a transcript of Oshin v Greenwich Royal London Borough Council
