Reasonableness — Council conducting inquiries as to facts — Issue of applicant giving up accommodation abroad — Council providing temporary accommodation pending inquiries — Council establishing that applicant intending to holiday in the UK — Whether accommodation abroad constituting “settled accommodation” within meaning of the Act — Where questions of fact to be left to the discretion of a public body whether council making sufficient inquiries — Whether council taking into account irrelevant consideration — Whether inquiries reaching required standard — First instance decision in favour of council — Applicant’s appeal dismissed
The applicant was born in Trinidad but lived in Anse la Ruye, St Lucia. She came to the UK at the age of 28 in 1976. She married, but returned to St Lucia in 1982, staying with her sister’s family. She returned to the UK in 1989 where she stayed at a number of addresses in London, the last of which was at 13 Ash House, Harrow Road, London W10, her uncle’s home. She was interviewed at the homeless person’s unit of the respondent council as to the reasons for her presence in the UK.
The council found her temporary accommodation and the applicant was also reinterviewed some months later. She cited a possible reconciliation with her husband and her daughter’s schooling among the reasons for returning. Further inquiries confirmed the “holidaying” aspect of her presence in the UK. On this information the council decided that she was intentionally homeless by having given up accommodation in St Lucia, which would have been reasonable for her to have continued to occupy. The council also stated that a notice to quit her current accommodation would be served. In the course of correspondence with the applicant’s solicitors, the council refused to reconsider their position.
At first instance, Auld J dismissed the application for judicial review. The applicant appealed. She submitted, inter alia, that in basing their decision that she had come to the UK on holiday the council had taken into account an irrelevant consideration; that they had failed to make sufficient inquiries to meet their obligation under section 62 of the Act; that their reasons were inadequate; and that the decision was perverse.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. The appeal again raised the question of what constituted intentional homelessness for the purposes of Part III of the 1985 Act. The judge had set out the well-known passage in Publbofer v Hillingdon London Borough Council [1986] AC 484 at p 518D that “Where the existence … of a fact is left to the judgment and discretion of a public body … it is the duty of the court to leave the decision of that fact to the public body to whom Parliament has entrusted the decision-making power save in a case where it is obvious that the public body, consciously or unconsciously, are acting perversely.”
2. In the instant case, the judge found that at two interviews, six months apart, the applicant made no mention that she had left her home of six years’ duration in St Lucia because it was unavailable or inadequate. That finding of fact was not sought to be challenged by the applicant.
3. The question whether she had come to the UK for a holiday was relevant to the question whether the accommodation in St Lucia, was “settled accommodation”, ie accommodation to which it would have been reasonable for her to have returned. It entitled the council to conclude that when she originally came to the UK, she intended to return and that — at that stage — she was not homeless.
4. The council therefore dated her intentional homelessness to the date when she decided that she would not return to St Lucia, but would remain in the UK.
5. With regard to the question of inquiries, in R v Kensington and Chelsea Royal London Borough Council, ex parte Bayani (1990) 22 HLR 406, it was stated that the duty under section 62 was to make inquiries as “are necessary to satisfy the authority”. It followed therefore that as it was the authority which had to be satisfied, the scope and scale of the inquires was, primarily at least, a matter for them. However, the introduction of the word “necessary” indicated that there was a standard which the inquiries had to observe. If the court was to intervene by way of judicial review, it had to be on the basis that the inquiries had not reached the required standard in the circumstances of the case.
6. In the instant appeal, when the council made their decision, it could not be said that the council lacked the material to satisfy them that the applicant had become homeless intentionally and that in all the circumstances that they had not made necessary inquiries.
7. Although the reasoning was described as “sparse”, it told the applicant all that she needed to know. Thereafter the council’s solicitor explained their reasoning in detail in the later correspondence.
Martin Westgate (instructed by Allan Edwards & Co) appeared for the appellant; Clive Jones (instructed by solicitor to Westminster City Council) appeared for the respondents.
