Housing in UK Law

The power of decision being committed by the statute exclusively to the housing authority, their exercise of the power can only be challenged before the courts on the strictly limited grounds (i) that their decision was vitiated by bias or procedural unfairness; (ii) that they have reached a conclusion of fact which can be impugned on the principles set out in the speech of Lord Radcliffe in Edwards v. Bairstow [1956] A.C. 14; or (iii) that, in so far as they have exercised a discretion (as they may require to do in considering questions of reasonableness under section 17(1)(2) and (4)), the exercise can be impugned on the principles set out in the judgment of Lord Greene M.R. in Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd. v. Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 K.B. 223.

Once a decision has been reached by the housing authority which gives rise to the temporary, the limited or the full housing duty, rights and obligations are immediately created in the field of private law. But it is inherent in the scheme of the Act that an appropriate public law decision of the housing authority is a condition precedent to the establishment of the private law duty.

This is an area where, in our judgment, the courts must treat the decisions of Parliament as to what is in the public interest with particular deference. The correctness of this decision is more appropriate for Parliament than the courts and the HRA does not require the courts to disregard the decisions of Parliament in relation to situations of this sort when deciding whether there has been a breach of the convention.

The House has made it very plain, most recently in Runa Begum v Tower Hamlets London Borough Council [2003] UKHL 5, [2003] 2 WLR 388, particularly in paragraphs 9 and 49, that the administration of public housing under various statutory schemes is entrusted to local housing authorities. It is not for the court to second-guess allocation decisions. The Strasbourg authorities have adopted a very pragmatic and realistic approach to the issue of justification.

Where the existence or non-existence of a fact is left to the judgment and discretion of a public body and that fact involves a broad spectrum ranging from the obvious to the debatable to the just conceivable, 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.

The first is that the Act is a scheme of social welfare, intended to confer benefits at the public expense on grounds of public policy. Public money is spent on housing the homeless not merely for the private benefit of people who find themselves homeless but on grounds of general public interest: because, for example, proper housing means that people will be less likely to suffer illness, turn to crime or require the attention of other social services.

First, it is designed for the expressed purpose of bringing families together. Secondly, it forms part of a complex of duties which local authorities owe to categories of persons seeking housing. The Act must be interpreted in the light of these matters, with liberality having regard to its social purposes, and also with recognition of the claims of others and the nature and scale of local authorities' responsibilities.