R v Westminster City Council ex parte Castelli and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | RE,or |
| Judgment Date | 05 October 1995 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1995] EWHC J1005-4 |
| Date | 05 October 1995 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | CO/1385/95 & CO/1923/95 |
[1995] EWHC J1005-4
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION CROWN OFFICE LIST
Before : Mr Roger Henderson QC (Sitting as a Deputy Judge of the Queen's Bench Division)
CO/1385/95 & CO/1923/95
MR J LUBA (instructed by The Advice Centre, London, WC1) appeared on behalf of the Applicants.
MR C H JONES (instructed by the Legal Services Team, Westminster City Council) appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
Thursday, 5th October 1995
THE DEPUTY JUDGE: Central to the cases of Mr Castelli and Mr Tristan-Garcia, who are nationals of Italy and Spain respectively, are the questions whether the Respondent local housing authority, the Westminster City Council, had any power to make decisions about their rights to reside in this country, what were those rights when the decisions were made and whether the Respondent discharged its housing responsibilities according to law. It is submitted by the Applicants that their status was and is a matter to be decided by other governmental authorities and not by the Respondent. They further contend that in any event the Respondent owed them duties under Part III of the Housing Act 1985 ("the Act") which the Respondent has signally failed to discharge. The Respondent has decided in each case that it owed no housing duty at all to either of the Applicants and contends that at least the final decisions were correct in law.
Having set the scene, it is appropriate to consider the facts in the two cases. It is convenient to take them in the sequence in which they were argued. I was invited at the outset to allow both cases to be called on together and, since there are similar facts and common issues of law, it is convenient with the agreement of both parties to deliver one Judgment relating to the two cases. For fairness and convenience sake, I will from time to time treat submissions of law made on behalf of one Applicant as having been made on behalf of both.
Gaudenzio Castelli is Italian. He was born in Italy in July 1960. He speaks very little English. He is unmarried. He is vulnerable and, if housing duties are owed to him, he is in priority need of accommodation under Part III of the Housing Act 1985 ("the Act") because he is ill. He is HIV positive, suffers from some symptoms of the condition and has been described by the Middlesex Hospital, to which he was admitted in the Spring of this year for suspected tuberculosis and psychiatric difficulties, as suffering from increasingly poor health. These matters obtained when the Respondent's decisions were made and are undisputed. They became known to the Respondent after the Applicant turned to the Respondent for housing assistance at the beginning of February 1995.
Mr Castelli had arrived from Bergamo in Italy in March 1994, having formerly been involved in a flower business. Being an Italian, he required no permission to enter the United Kingdom. He left what seems to have been a settled home, but nothing turns on that because in the event the Respondent decided, before it ever came to consider the question of whether the Applicant was intentionally homeless, that it owed no duty under the Act to the Applicant. I mention it, because it should not be thought that the Court is unmindful of the potential defence of local housing authorities to unmeritorious claims, where a homeless person has deliberately left settled accommodation. If the Respondent has at any time to reconsider the Applicant's homelessness, it will be for the Respondent to consider and to decide the relevant facts which have not been developed in evidence or addressed before me.
Upon arrival the Applicant was self-sufficient in financial terms. He had some £3,000 with him and in interview in May 1995 he told the Respondent that he had "needed a break, wanted to put his life together and had in mind setting up his own plastic recycling business in London". He told the Respondent that being frustrated by his inability to establish the business he became involved in drug-taking and had no clear memory of the addresses where he had stayed, having first arranged to live with a friend in Camden Town. At his first interview in February 1995 he said that he spent much of his time squatting. Nowhere has it been suggested that he came to this country to obtain medical services. In interview in June 1995 he is recorded as having said that he believed that £3,000 was enough to support him until he found work, but that the money ran out in December 1994 and "he was forced to live off the charity of his friends and the church". He told the Respondent in the same interview that his health had deteriorated since coming to the United Kingdom and that he had been in hospital several times.
When he turned to the Respondent for help in February 1995, a principal homelessness officer of the Respondent decided that the Respondent owed the Applicant a duty under Section 63 of the Act and secured temporary bed and breakfast accommodation for him pending medical assessment. For reasons to which I will come, I consider that the Respondent was duty-bound to behave as it did. Section 63 is headed "Interim Duty to Accommodate in Case of Apparent Priority Need" and provides:
"(1) If the local housing authority have reason to believe that an applicant may be homeless and have a priority need, they shall secure that accommodation is made available for his occupation pending a decision as a result of their enquiries under Section 62."
Section 62 is headed "Enquiry into Cases of Possible Homelessness or Threatened Homelessness". It provides:
"(1) If a person ("an applicant") applies to a local housing authority for accommodation, or for assistance in obtaining accommodation, and the authority have reason to believe that he may be homeless or threatened with homelessness, they shall make such enquiries as are necessary to satisfy themselves as to whether he is homeless or threatened with homelessness.
(2) If they are so satisfied, they shall make any further enquiries necessary to satisfy themselves as to -
(a)whether he has a priority need, and
(b)whether he became homeless or threatened with homelessness intentionally;
and if they think fit they may also make enquiries as to whether he has a local connection with the district of another local housing authority in England, Wales or Scotland."
On behalf of the Respondent it is now said that there was never an interim duty to secure accommodation for the Applicant, nor a duty to make the relevant enquiries because he was and is a person to whom the Part 3 duties were and are not owed. As respects the existence of the interim duties, I disagree, but for reasons to which I come those duties were owed in public law alone and not ad hominem.
As indicated by the Guidance issued by the Secretary of State to which the Respondent had to have regard by virtue of Section 71 of the Act, the medical assessment was made with appropriate and commendable promptness. The advice to the Respondent at that time was that the Applicant was not vulnerable within Section 59(1)(c) of the Act but that further medical information was required. On the same day, 6th February 1995, the Applicant made an application for income support, and on the 14th February that application was rejected because it was said that he had failed the habitual residence test. Within two weeks he had been admitted to the Middlesex Hospital in the condition to which I have already adverted.
It was on 10th April 1995 that the Applicant was discharged from hospital, and it is from that date that the Applicant seeks to recover damages for alleged breach of the Respondent's statutory duty. The Respondent declined voluntarily to provide further temporary accommodation for the Applicant on and after that date. At the time, the oral explanation for the Respondent's decision was that the Applicant had failed the test of residence. By a letter of 10th May that decision was explained in the following terms:
" Re Section 64 Housing Act 1985, Part 3
I refer to your application to this authority for assistance under the provisions of the above-named Act and now write to inform you of the decision.
The authority's investigations have established that your entry into the United Kingdom was upon the condition that you would maintain and accommodate yourself without recourse to public funds. "Public funds" include housing under Part III of the Housing Act 1985. In those circumstances the Council does not owe you a duty under that Act.
Furthermore, by reason of your terms of entry, the Council has decided that you are not homeless within the meaning of the Housing Act 1985 by reason that the representations which procured entry, namely that you will and therefore are able to accommodate yourself and your status of entry are binding upon you. (sic)
Alternatively, you have informed us that you have no funds or other income and will be unable to make payment for accommodation provided. That being the case you will be unable to accept accommodation which would be offered to you, namely accommodation for which you would have to pay reasonable charges.
In the above mentioned circumstances the Council has decided that it owes you no duty under Part III of the Act. It is the Council's decision that you are not homeless within the meaning of the Act.
We are prepared to offer you seven days in bed and breakfast whilst you make your own arrangements. This would, however, be dependent on your ability to pay a reasonable charge…"
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