The Court of Appeal has made a test-case ruling that limits the powers of local authorities to reject accommodation applications from homeless refugees.
The court has ruled that Kensington and Chelsea Royal London Borough Council and Harrow London Borough Council were not entitled to refer the accommodation claims of two asylum seekers, one from Iraq and one from Afghanistan, to Glasgow.
When the two arrived in the UK, the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) sent both of them to accommodation in Glasgow.
Both were later given permission to remain in the UK and, as a result, lost their NASS entitlement to accommodation.
The two went to London, claiming to be homeless, but the councils, on the basis of the provisions of the Housing Act 1996, referred their applications to Glasgow City Council.
The Housing Act provision stipulates that an authority are entitled to refer such applications to another authority only if the applicant has a local connection with that authority. Both councils claimed that the two applicants, by virtue of having initially been sent to Glasgow by the NASS, had established such a connection with Glasgow.
Their stance was upheld by county courts in both cases, but the Appeal Court judges have ruled that the councils and the county courts were wrong.
Ruling that residence in an area as a result of the NASS dispersal scheme did not meet the requirements of the Housing Act provision, Simon Brown LJ said that the bottom line was that such accommodation could not be characterised as residence in a locality of the applicants’ own choice.
In those circumstances, he said that the two councils had not been entitled to refer the applications to Glasgow.
Al-Ameri v Kensington and Chelsea Royal London Borough Council; Osmani v Harrow London Borough Council Court of Appeal (Simon Brown, Buxton and Carnwath LJJ) 28 February 2003.
References: PLS News 03/03/03
