Housing – Local authority – Disabled facilities grant (DFG) – Claimant applying for DFG for platform lift to enable access/exit from home – Defendant local authority refusing application – Claimant applying for judicial review – Whether proposed works for specified purpose – Whether relevant works necessary and appropriate to meet needs of disabled occupant – Whether reasonable and practicable to carry out works – Application granted
The claimant was 63 years old and lived with her husband and adult son in a garden maisonette in Islington, London. She was a secure tenant of the defendant local authority. The claimant had health difficulties and depended on wheelchairs for mobility. Her husband also had health problems which frequently necessitated stays in hospital.
The home had been subject to various improvements and adjustments carried out by or on behalf of the defendant, in order to facilitate the claimant’s living there, including two stair lifts to permit her to access the upper floor of her home on the ground and lower ground levels of a period house. The claimant had access to and the use of a garden to the rear of the property. Apart from the garden which was accessed via a ramp, the claimant’s sole means of access to and exit from her home was for her sons to carry her up/down steps to her lower-ground front door.
The claimant applied for a disabled facilities grant (DFG) under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 to finance a platform lift from her front garden to street level to enable the claimant and her husband to access/exit their home without assistance. The defendant refused the application, pointing out that the home was unsuitable for the claimant’s circumstances, saying the works were not reasonable or practicable and offering to make arrangements for more suitable property.
The claimant applied for judicial review of that decision, seeking a mandatory order compelling the defendant to approve her application for a DFG and to commission expeditiously the works approved pursuant to the grant.
Held: The application was granted.
(1) Section 23 of the 1996 Act fixed the purposes for which an application for a grant had to be approved. The first such purpose was for facilitating access by a disabled occupant to and from the dwelling. It was common ground that the platform lift requested by the claimant would facilitate such access. Thus, section 23 was satisfied because the works were within the scope of the specified purpose: R(B) v Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] EWCA Civ 134 [2004] 1 WLR 2017 applied.
(2) Under section 24(3)(a), approval for a grant could be given where the relevant works were “necessary and appropriate” to meet the needs of the disabled occupant. The only means of facilitating the claimant’s access to her home was to install a platform lift. In order to determine whether that was “necessary” or “necessary and appropriate”, it had to be determined what “needs” were referred to in section 24(3)(a). Each statutory duty had to be applied according to the statutory purpose and general context of the relevant statute and the terms of the duty. The overriding purpose of the DFG was to make the dwelling or building suitable for the accommodation, welfare or employment of the disabled occupant. Section 22A of the 1996 Act made clear that DFGs were not restricted to local authority tenants or tenants more generally but extended to disabled persons whether they were owner occupiers, tenants or simply occupiers. Had the claimant exercised her right to buy, it would not be open to the defendant to refuse the grant on the basis that she had to sell up and move elsewhere. The structure of the 1996 Act, the legislative history and its purpose which related to “the dwelling”, ie the person’s home for the time being, excluded such an approach. No reason of principle had been advanced for a difference in approach for local authority tenants. Accordingly, it was not lawful to refuse a DFG on the ground that the claimant had to move her home.
It was only if the works furthered a specified purpose that the mandatory obligation to approve the works arose. To satisfy the requirement that the “relevant works” were necessary and appropriate, the works which were the subject of the application for the grant had to be examined. Given that the works being considered here were those which facilitated access to and from the home, the appropriateness of the works had to be judged by reference to the needs they were designed to serve. The claimant’s relevant needs were to access/exit her home. That did not equate “purposes” with “needs”, as the defendant argued, because the purpose of the application for a grant was the facilitation of access to/exit from the home whereas the claimant’s needs were to access/exit her home: R v Birmingham City Council, ex p Mohammed [1999] 1 WLR 33, R(B) v Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council [2003] EWHC 1832 (Admin) and Bloomsbury International Ltd v Sea Fish Industry Authority [2011] UKSC 25 applied.
(3) Section 24(3)(b) required the defendant to be satisfied “that it is reasonable and practicable to carry out the relevant works having regard to the age and condition of the dwelling”. The sub-paragraph was focused on reasonableness and practicability by reference to age and condition. The statutory test did not permit the decision maker to test “reasonable and practicable” by reference to the general suitability of different aspects of the dwelling for the disabled person’s general needs. To do so would be indirectly to widen very significantly the “needs” being referred to in section 24(3)(a) and in effect to modify the statutory scheme. Whether there was wheelchair access to various parts of the property was not within the meaning of the term “condition” in section 24(3)(b). Nor could it be said that the lack of suitability in various respects of a person’s home excluded such a person from access to a grant to facilitate the basic need of accessing/exiting the home.
(4) The court had no power to substitute its own appreciation of the facts for the housing authority. It followed that the defendant’s decision would be quashed and the application redetermined on the basis of the information already before the defendant. In all the circumstances, the reconsideration should not exceed a period of 10 weeks.
Lindsay Johnson (instructed by Hopkin Murray Beskine) appeared for the claimant; Catherine Rowlands (instructed by Islington Legal Services) appeared for the defendant.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
