Mortgage — False information — Dispossession of property — Application for local authority accommodation as homeless person — Refusal of accommodation on basis that applicant was intentionally homeless — Whether homelessness not deliberate since applicant acted in good faith — High Court quashing council’s decision to refuse accommodation — Court of Appeal holding that giving of false information could not be treated as done in good faith — Judgment for the council
In 1987 the applicant sought to raise money for a business venture. She obtained a loan of £46,000 by mortgaging her flat with the Skipton on Building Society. She was unemployed at the time and deliberately gave false information to the building society stating that she was in work and earning £18,000 pa.
The business venture failed and the building society took action against the applicant and obtained possession of the property. The applicant then applied as a homeless person to the local authority for accommodation. The council took the view that the applicant was intentionally homeless and refused to offer her permanent accommodation. The High Court quashed that decision, but the council appealed. Section 60 of the Housing Act 1985 provided that a person was homeless intentionally if he deliberately did or failed to do anything in consequence of which he ceased to occupy accommodation which was available for his occupation. Section 60(3) provided that an act or omission in good faith on the part of a person who was unaware of any relevant fact should not be treated as deliberate.
Held The appeal was allowed.
1. Section 60(1) required the council to identify the cause of the homelessness and then ask whether that cause was the result of a deliberate act by the applicant.
2. In this case the act relied upon by the council was the provision of the false information. That was the act in respect of which the allegation of good faith had to be established.
3. The judge had quashed the council’s decision on the basis of section 60(3) in that the giving of false information was part of a transaction designed to lead to the acquisition of a business and it was that transaction as a whole which set in train the events leading to the dispossession. There was nothing to suggest that she did not genuinely believe that she was buying a valuable business.
4. However, those observations could not survive the proper construction of section 60(3). It was not possible to hold that a fraudulent act such as was done by the applicant was done in good faith for the purposes of that provision.
Joseph C Harper QC (instructed by the solicitor to Barnet London Borough Council) for the council; James Bowen (instructed by Iqbal & Co) appeared for the applicant.
