Housing — Homelessness – Appeal — Temporary accommodation — Respondent local authority making final offer of accommodation to appellant homeless person – Appellant maintaining offer letter sent to wrong address — Reviewing officer deciding letter correctly addressed — Whether county court on appeal having jurisdiction to determine relevant facts or entitled to quash review decision as matter of judicial review — Appeal dismissed
The appellant and her son became homeless and applied to the respondent local authority for housing assistance. Although she was in temporary accommodation as a homeless person in priority need, the respondents purportedly wrote to her offering permanent accommodation. The appellant maintained that she had never received the letter, relying on the fact that an earlier letter in identical terms had been sent to her previous temporary address. The letter was stated to be a final offer for the purposes of section 193(7) of the Housing Act 1996.
The appellant subsequently viewed the property but refused to accept it. However, she was informed by the respondents that they had discharged their duty to her under Part 7 of the 1996 Act, in the light of section 193(7). The appellant requested a review of that decision on the basis that, as she had not received the offer letter, the respondents had not discharged their duty. A reviewing officer concluded that the appellant had received the letter, that the accommodation was suitable and that there was no justification for refusing it. On appeal, the county court upheld that decision.
The appellant appealed, contending that the judge should have determined for himself whether or not she had received the letter. In any event, the judge should have received oral evidence on the matter; and, even if the judge’s approach to the matter had effectively been a judicial review, he had reached the wrong conclusion.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
The argument that the judge should have determined the issue of whether or not the notification letter had been received by the claimant was primarily advanced on the ground that the issue raised, both conceptually and under the 1996 Act, was not an assessment involving a value judgment for the authority but a question of hard fact to be determined by the court for itself. Under Part 7 of the 1996 Act, a number of questions involved value judgments expressly assigned to the local authority, whereas the question of whether an applicant had received notification of a final offer of accommodation that satisfied section 193(7) of the 1996 Act could be said to be a “true or false” issue, whose determination was not expressly assigned to the authority.
The cesser of an authority’s duty under section 193 pursuant to section 193(7) depended, inter alia, on the applicant having been sent appropriate notice as therein described. If the applicant disputed the authority’s contention that the duty had ceased under the section, she had to refer the issue for review under section 202(1)(b). If, as in the instant case, the applicant said that the duty had not ceased because she had not been sent the appropriate notice, the review had to consider and determine that issue. Any appeal to the county court against the reviewer’s decision on the issue was limited to a point of law: see section 204(1). Accordingly, there was no jurisdiction under the statutory scheme for the county court to set itself up as a finder of the relevant primary facts. That analysis was consistent with the notion that the exercise carried out by the county court under section 204 was, in substance, the same as that of the High Court in judicial review: Runa Begum v Tower Hamlets London Borough Council [2003] 2 AC 430 and Ali v Birmingham City Council [2010] 2 AC 39 considered.
As a matter of principle, it was open to a judge hearing a judicial review application to permit a party to adduce oral evidence. However, for reasons of both principle and practice, such a course should be taken only in exceptional cases. In the majority of judicial review cases, even where the issue was whether a finding of fact ought to be quashed, there ought to be no question of live witnesses. Even the provision of further documentary evidence was questionable. Given the nature of hearings under section 204, the wide terms of sections 204(3) and the good sense and experience of the county court judges, the court’s observations were not intended to cut down the flexible and practical approach to section 204 appeals adopted by the county court (let alone the practices of the Administrative Court: Reilly v Mackman [1983] 2 AC 237.
In the instant case, there was no ground for contending that live evidence and cross-examination should have been received by the judge. It could not be said that there was no evidence to support the conclusion of the reviewing officer that the appellant had received the respondents’ offer letter; or that that conclusion was plainly untenable or that the officer had misunderstood or was ignorant of an established and relevant fact.
Stephen Knafler QC and Toby Vanhegan (instructed by Blacklaws Davies LLP) appeared for the appellant; Andrew Arden QC and David Lintott (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared for the respondents.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
