Social Housing in UK Law

Reference to the termination of a tenancy brings me to a final point on this issue, which is that if the allocation of housing stock by LQHT is a public function, then it would in my view be wrong to separate out “management” decisions concerning the termination of a tenancy as acts of a purely private nature. It would be artificial to separate out the act of terminating a tenancy, or indeed other acts in the course of management of a property, from the act of granting a tenancy.

Third, it is only of limited significance that the function will be subject to the principles of judicial review. The purpose of attaching liability under section 6 is different to the purpose of subjecting a body to administrative law principles, and it cannot be assumed that because a body is subject to one set of rules it will therefore automatically be subject to the other.

Hence Mr Knafler, in common with others who have appeared for local social services authorities, has conceded that 'residential accommodation' can mean ordinary housing without the provision of any ancillary services.

That duty is premised on an unmet need for 'care and attention' (a 'condition precedent', as this Court put it in the Westminster case, at p 93E). It is simply the means whereby the necessary care and attention can be made available if otherwise it will not (I do not understand this Court to have rejected that part of the local authority's argument in the Westminster case, at p 93B-D).

In this case, Mr Mountain decided that the claimant did not have an unmet need for care and attention. Need is a relative concept which trained and experienced social workers are much better equipped to assess than are lawyers and courts provided that they act rationally. He was free of hallucinations and happier than he had been for a long time.

Had it been that the combination of the claimant's mental health and a severe housing problem gave rise to a need for care and attention, this claim would still have faced considerable difficulties. Nothing in section 21 allows, let alone requires, a local social services authority to make any provision authorised or required to be made, whether by them or by any other authority, by or under any enactment other than Part III of the 1948 Act.

Where a local social services authority is making an assessment of need, it is good practice to consider whether the claimant may have a need for services provided by other authorities, in particular health and housing. We would be doing those clients no favours if social workers were inhibited in continuing that honourable tradition by the fear that responsibilities which properly lay with others might thereby be laid at social services' door.