Local housing departments have received a High Court warning that they cannot side-step obligations to keep properties up to standard by relying on technicalities to ward off tenants’ complaints.
In a test case that has consequences for all local authority housing departments, the High Court has ruled that when council tenants serve “improvement” notices on local authorities it is not essential for them to be served at the principal offices of the relevant authority.
The ruling follows appeals by three tenants of properties owned by Birmingham and Kingston upon Hull councils against a decision by local magistrates. The tenants served notices on the councils under section 82(2) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 informing them that they were taking magistrates court proceedings over the condition of their homes.
However, the magistrates dismissed the notices on the basis that the addresses to which they were sent were local housing authority departments rather than the councils main offices.
But the High Court has now ruled that the magistrates were wrong, and has warned local authorities not to attempt to use legal nit-picking in a bid to ward off complaints.
Allowing an appeal by the tenants against the decision of the magistrates, Mitchell J said that the 1990 Act was intended to provide ordinary people, many of whom were in some way disadvantaged, with a speedy and effective method of remedying housing conditions that could often have an adverse effect on their or their childrens health.
“Parliaments intention should not, in our view, be frustrated by introducing into this straightforward and swift statutory remedy any technical obstacle of which the ordinary citizen will almost certainly be unaware”, he said.
PLS News 15/1/99
