Samuels v Birmingham City Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Patten |
| Judgment Date | 21 January 2015 |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] EWCA Civ 946 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: B5/2014/2185 |
| Date | 21 January 2015 |
[2015] EWCA Civ 946
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE BIRMINGHAM CIVIL JUSTICE CENTRE
(HIS HONOUR JUDGE WORSTER)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Patten
Case No: B5/2014/2185
Mr J Stark (instructed by The Community Law Partnership Ltd) appeared on behalf of the Applicant
This is an application for permission to bring a second appeal in a Section 204 Housing Act case where the issue is whether or not the applicant for housing had made herself intentionally homeless in relation to the property which she had previously occupied. That issue turned almost entirely on affordability.
The applicant's case before the Housing Authority was that she had had to leave that property because rent arrears had built up due to her inability to afford to pay the rent for the accommodation. She provided the housing officer with details of her income and expenditure. They showed that after the receipt of housing benefit there remained a shortfall in relation to the rent of some £34 per week and the issue therefore arose whether or not that balance of the rent over her housing benefit was affordable in the sense that it could be paid out of her other income which, as I understand it, comes exclusively from benefits.
In relation to that, her case was that her expenditure per month was some £1,386 which included £750 or £173 a week for food and housekeeping. She is a single parent with four children and the housing officer's case is that he considered her entitlement on that basis. There is an issue about that in the sense that on one reading of his decision it would appear that he had assumed wrongly that the relevant family unit consisted of the mother and only two children. He was allowed by the judge to put in an email confirming that in fact he had considered the case on the basis of there being four children. Therefore the prospective appeal would, if permission were granted, first of all raise the question of whether that evidence was in fact admissible on the principles set out by this court in The Queen v Westminster City CouncilEx Parte Ermakov [1996] 2 All ER 302 and, secondly, if it was admissible and therefore the judge was right to consider the case on the basis of a one-adult four-children family unit, whether the housing officer was entitled to conclude that the rental figure of £34 per week could be absorbed and paid out of available income.
In relation to that, the figures for expenditure provided by the applicant's solicitors are not challenged. If one deducts the £34 out of the applicant's available...
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