Housing – Registered social landlord — Action for possession – Appellant landlord granting periodic assured tenancy of property to respondent – Respondent tenant physically violent to wife and children — Wife and children moving out of property – Appellant seeking possession of property – County court finding violent behaviour occurring after separation — Judge refusing to order possession — Whether legislation precluding possession order where parties not living together as couple in property immediately prior to victim moving out — Appeal allowed
In April 2003, the respondent was granted a tenancy of a four-bedroomed house where he lived with his wife and children under an assured tenancy agreement. The agreement prohibited any form of harassment, including violence or threats of violence. The respondent had a history of physical violence and threats towards his family and, in 2006, he left his wife. However, the violence continued and, in 2007, his wife and children left the property on the advice of social services. The respondent then moved back in.
The appellant registered social landlord sought possession of the property on a number of grounds under Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988, including ground 14A which related to domestic violence. The court held that ground 14A applied only to the case of violence, or threats of violence, proved against the respondent while he and his wife were living in the property as a couple. Accordingly, it did not apply in the instant case since the effective violence and threats occurred after they had ceased living together. If that construction of ground 14A was wrong, the court would have concluded that it would not have been reasonable to make an outright possession order.
The appellant appealed, claiming that the county court had erred in law in its interpretation and application of ground 14A.
Held: The appeal was allowed and the matter remitted for reconsideration.
There was nothing ambiguous about the concept or the wording of ground 14A that could properly attract a principle of interpretation that favoured the party to a marriage or civil partnership, or equivalent relationship, who had been violent or threatening towards the other party, thereby causing that party to leave the property.
The fact that the past tense was used in the wording of ground 14A did not support the construction adopted by the judge. Although the ground looked to the past, to the facts of occupation and to identify the past event that had triggered the operation of the ground, that is, the victim leaving the property because of the violence, it also looked to the future to see whether the person who had left was unlikely to return. The use of the past tense did not expressly or impliedly require the parties to the relationship to be living together as a couple at the date of the causative violence or at the date of the relevant triggering event. The references to couple and to partner did not impose such a requirement; they identified one of two people in a relevant relationship.
Ground 14A covered the circumstances in the instant case; the judge’s construction defied common sense. Violence by one person in a relationship that caused the other person to leave the property was, in substance, the same inhuman conduct with the same human consequences, whether or not they were still living together at the date of the victim’s departure. The judge had made a clear finding of fact that the respondent’s conduct had caused his wife to leave the property and there were no grounds for interfering with it.
The question as to whether it would be reasonable to make a possession order had to be remitted to the county court for reconsideration in the light of the judgments on the construction point. Whether it was reasonable to make an order for possession ought to be reconsidered by a different judge in the light of the correct construction of ground 14A. The county court judge would be able to consider the question of reasonableness afresh with the benefit of evidence of the up-to-date position at the remitted hearing.
Robert Harrap (instructed by Metropolitan Housing Trust Legal Services) appeared for the appellant; Jan Luba QC and Mark Twomey (instructed by Croydon and Sutton Law Centre) appeared for the respondent.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister