Simmons v Pizzey
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Wilberforce,Viscount Dilhorne,Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone,Lord Fraser of Tullybelton,Lord Keith of Kinkel |
| Judgment Date | 12 May 1977 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1977] UKHL J0512-2 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1977] UKHL J0512-2
House of Lords
Lord Wilberforce
Viscount Dilhorne
Lord Hailsham of St. Mary-Lebone
Lord Fraser of Tullybelton
Lord Keith of Kinkel
Upon Report from the Appellate Committee, to whom was referred the Cause Simmons against Pizzey (on Appeal from a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division), That the Committee had heard Counsel, as well on Monday the 21st, as on Tuesday the 22d, days of March last, upon the Petition and appeal of Erin Patrin Margaret Pizzey of 369 Chiswick High Road, London W.4, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice of the 16th of November 1976, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, varied or altered, or that the Petitioner might have such other relief in the premises as to Her Majesty the Queen in Her Court of Parliament, might seem meet; and Counsel having been heard on behalf of Thomas James Simmons, the Respondent to the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Order of a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice, of the 16th day of November 1976, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Affirmed, and that the said Petition and Appeal be, and the same is hereby, dismissed this House: And it is further Ordered, That the Costs incurred by the Respondent in this House be paid out of Central Funds pursuant to section 6 of the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1973, the amount thereof to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments.
My Lords,
I have had the benefit of reading in advance the opinion prepared by my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone. I agree with it and do not think it necessary to add any observations of my own. I would dismiss the appeal.
My Lords,
The Chiswick Women's Aid is a charity which provides the house, 369 Chiswick High Road, in the Borough of Hounslow, of which the appellant is the occupier, as a refuge for ill treated women and their children. On the 1st December 1975 the Borough Council gave a direction fixing 36 as the maximum number of individuals who might occupy the house. On the 27th January 1976 an information was laid charging the appellant with knowingly having failed on the 14th January 1976 to comply with that requirement. On that date the justices found as a fact that there were 75 persons residing in the house.
The Housing Act 1957 made it an offence for the occupier of a dwelling house to cause or permit it to be overcrowded. A house was to be deemed to be overcrowded when the number of persons sleeping in the house either was such that any two or more of them being persons of the opposite sex ten years or more old and not living together as husband and wife had to sleep in the same room or was in excess of the number calculated in accordance with the 6th Schedule to the Act based on either the number of rooms in the house or the floor area of the rooms (section 77).
That Act made special provision to deal with overcrowding in houses in multiple occupation. Section 90(1) provided as follows:
"(1) If it appears to a local authority, in the case of a house within their district, or of part of such a house, which is let in lodgings or occupied by more than one family, that excessive numbers of persons are being accommodated on the premises having regard to the rooms available"
the local authority may serve a notice on the occupier stating in relation to any room the maximum number of persons by whom it was suitable for use as sleeping accommodation at any one time, or if they think fit, stating that a room was unsuitable for use for sleeping. If after such a notice became operative, more than the number permitted slept in a room, an offence was committed (section 90(4)).
Part II of the Housing Act 1961 contained amendments of the 1957 Act and sections 12 to 23 in that Part are under the crossheading "Houses in multiple occupation". Sections 12 and 13 enable a local authority to prescribe a code of management for such houses: section 14 gives a local authority power to require the doing of work to make good neglect of proper standards of management and section 15, which is of considerable importance in this case, reads as follows:
"(1) If the condition of a house which, or a part of which, is let in lodgings, or which is occupied by members of more than one family, is, in the opinion of the local authority, so far defective with respect to any of the following matters, that is to say:
natural and artificial lighting,
ventilation,
water supply,
personal washing facilities,
drainage and sanitary conveniences,
facilities for the storage, preparation and cooking of food, and the disposal of waste water, or
installations for space heating or for the use of space heating appliances,
having regard to the number of individuals or households, or both accommodated for the time being on the premises, as not to be reasonably suitable for occupation by those individuals or households, the local authority may serve…. a notice specifying the works which in the opinion of the local authority are required for rendering the premises reasonably suitable for such occupation as aforesaid, and requiring the person on whom the notice is served to execute those works."
A notice could only be served under this section if at the time it was served the house was in multiple occupation. It had to be a notice to remedy physical defects having regard to the number of individuals or households "accommodated for the time being" on the premises. The subsection clearly did not give a local authority power to serve such a notice in respect of a house not then in multiple occupation but which the local authority anticipated would become in multiple occupation.
Section 19 of the Act is ancillary to section 15 and gives a local authority an additional power. Subsection (1) of that section reads as follows:
"A local authority may, for the purpose of preventing the occurrence of, or remedying, a state of affairs calling for the service of a notice …. under section fifteen of this Act, fix as a limit for the house what is in their opinion the highest number of individuals who should, having regard to the considerations set out in subsection (1) of that section, live in the house in its existing condition, and give a direction applying that limit to the house."
Subsection (2) imposes the duty on the occupier not to permit any individual to take up residence in the house so as to increase the number living there above the prescribed limit; subsection (7) gives a local authority power to revoke a direction or vary it; and subsection (8) provides for an appeal to the county court should a local authority refuse an application for its revocation or variation by a person having an estate or interest in the house.
Subsection (10) makes it an offence for any person knowingly to fail to comply with the requirements imposed on him by subsection (2).
The direction given to the appellant was given under section 19(1) as amended by section 58(1) of the Housing Act 1969 and the information charged her with committing an offence under subsection (10).
In Holm v. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea [1968] 1 Q.B. 646 a landlord appealed to the county court against notices served on him under sections 15 and 16 of the Act on the ground that the house was not occupied by members of more than one family, the tenant and his wife living on the first floor above a shop and their son and daughter-in-law with their children on the second floor. It was contended for the landlord that even if there were two households there was only one family and this contention was upheld by the county court judge and on appeal by the Court of Appeal with the result that the notices were held to be invalid. In the Court of Appeal it was suggested that the result might have been different if instead of the word "family" the word "household" had been used in the sections and this, no doubt, led to the enactment of section 58(1) of the Housing Act 1969 which is in the following terms: —
"Any statutory provision referring (in whatever terms) to a house which, or a part of which, is let in lodgings or which is occupied by members of more than one family shall have effect as if it referred to a house which is occupied by persons who do not form a single overcrowding in the future."
So now section 15 must be read as empowering the service of a notice in respect of a house occupied by persons who do not form a single household. There is no statutory definition in the Housing Acts of the word "household" and that word must be given its ordinary natural meaning. It is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that two families can form a single household and where that is the case, the house cannot be treated as a house in multiple occupation and a local authority cannot serve a valid notice under section 15.
In Allen v. Khan [1968] 1 Q.B. 609, a case decided on section 19 before it was amended, the Court of Appeal was prepared to assume that at the time the direction was given, the house was occupied only by members of one family so that a notice under section 15 could not have been given. Nevertheless it was held that a direction could validly be given under section 19, Lord Parker C.J. saying that it seemed to him that that section was dealing with the...
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