The King (on the application of SK) v Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead

THE DEPUTY JUDGE: This oral judgment follows the urgently-listed hearing yesterday afternoon of the defendant's application to set aside an order for urgent interim relief made on the papers last week by Calver J in a judicial review claim brought by the claimant. An anonymity order was also made last week under which the claimant is to be called SK and her two daughters, with whom this application is concerned, HZ and GZ.

The claimant is represented by Ms Kelleher of counsel; the defendant by Mr Paget of counsel. I am grateful to them both for their skeleton arguments and oral submissions.

Brief summary of the facts

This application arises out of a very difficult and tragic set of circumstances, which all parties recognise has had a very significant impact of the family involved. The claimant is the mother of eight children, including two daughters, aged 15 and 19, who normally live with her. I note from the papers that there have been other court proceedings involving the family, including family court proceedings and two previous judicial review proceedings relating to suitable homeless accommodation.

Some of the relevant history to this case is helpfully summarised in the decision of Lang J in the previous judicial review case reported as SK v Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead [2024] HLR 23, so I will not repeat it here. As I have said, an anonymity order was made last week and the initials used in this case are the same initials used for both the claimant and her daughters that have been used in previous proceedings.

The claimant previously made an application to the defendant for housing as she was legally homeless. She currently lives in Maidenhead in temporary accommodation provided by the defendant in compliance with its duty to provide her with suitable accommodation under section 193 of the Housing Act 1996, following the most recent judicial review proceedings between the parties, which I have mentioned.

Her two daughters, GZ, who is now aged 19, and HZ, who is now aged 15, both have the same rare degenerative neurological condition called Pantothenate Kinase-Associated Neurodegeneration (or PKAN). The claimant lives with GZ and, until her latest hospital admission in about February this year, HZ also lived with the claimant and GZ. The claimant's other children are either grown up or accommodated elsewhere following the conclusion of previous family court proceedings.

GZ has significant care needs and is a wheelchair user. She previously had a care package provide by the local Integrated Care Board (ICB), but she is now an adult, and I understand she has made the decision, currently, to refuse that care package and receives care from the claimant and other family members.

HZ is now an in-patient at the Evelina London Children's Hospital (“the Evelina hospital”). According to the claimant's statement of facts and grounds and as summarised in her skeleton argument, HZ's treating clinicians have informed the claimant that HZ is likely to die in the coming weeks or months, and potentially sooner. Her condition is described in the claimant's evidence by her treating consultant, Dr Daniel Lumsden, Consultant in Paediatric Neurology and Complex Motor Disorders, as ‘ not stable’ and ‘ fragile’. I note from the claimant's witness statement that a DNAR direction is now in place for HZ, with the agreement of both her parents and the local authority’.

HZ requires frequent interventions to open her airways (called “jaw thrusts”) up to twenty times a day. The Evelina hospital wishes to cease performing these airway-opening manoeuvres. Her treating clinicians are also concerned that the level of sedation necessary to make HZ comfortable may hasten her death by lowering her heart rate to an unsustainable rate. It is not known when HZ will die, but the claimant is, understandably, concerned it may be very sudden. The defendant shares parental responsibility for HZ with the claimant and HZ's father under a care order, and HZ has regular contact with her father and two younger siblings, who I believe are placed with foster families. All of those contact arrangements take place separately at the Evelina hospital and need to be coordinated.

It is apparent from the case papers that there have been differences of view between the claimant and HZ's previous carers in the home and with her medical team in the hospital. I was advised by Ms Kelleher in her skeleton argument that, on 15 July 2025, Guy's and St Thomas' Foundation Trust (‘the Trust’), which is the NHS Trust responsible for the Evelina Hospital, made an application under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court seeking a declaration that it is in HZ's best interests that the jaw thrusts are now discontinued. The Trust also suggested that this would enable HZ to be discharged to a hospice for palliative end-of-life care. It was confirmed at the hearing yesterday that a hearing date for that application in the Family Division has been set for next week, on 23 July 2025, but it is not clear if a further hearing will then be needed. The parties were agreed that, if the application was granted, this may result in HZ then being discharged to a hospice, potentially out of London, when a suitable place was identified.

I have not had sight of any documentation from the care proceedings, so I have limited knowledge of the background to the care orders made in this case or the concerns that gave rise to them, save for the information in these proceedings about the significant care needs of GZ and HZ and some references to the claimant's own communication and learning difficulties.

Procedural background

On 7 July 2025, the claimant filed this claim for judicial review and the application for urgent relief using Form N463. On 8 July 2025, orders for anonymity and interim relief were made by Calver J on the papers without any representations from the defendant beyond their responses in the pre-action correspondence which was in the bundle. He made an order for an interim mandatory injunction in the following terms:

“ Injunction: By 4pm on Friday 11 July 2025 and pending the determination of the Claimant's application for judicial review or further order of the court, the Defendant shall provide the Claimant and her daughter, GZ, with accommodation which is adequate for their needs, namely wheelchair accessible accommodation within approximately 20 minutes total travel distance from Evelina London Children's Hospital, Westminster Bridge Rd, London, SE1 7EH”.

He also gave liberty to apply to the defendant in these terms:

“Liberty to apply: The Defendant shall have liberty to apply to discharge or vary the terms of this order on 24 hours' notice to the Claimant's solicitors”.

On 8 July 2025, those orders were served on the defendant. On Friday 11 July 2025, the defendant applied to set aside the order for interim relief and asked for it to be considered urgently before the deadline for compliance later that day. For reasons unknown to this court, the matter was not, in fact, put before a judge until Monday 14 July 2025, by when the claimant had filed her response to the defendant's application. Linden J, having considered the matter, then directed yesterday's urgent oral hearing of the defendant's application rather than dealing with the matter again on the papers.

Claim for interim relief

In the judicial review proceedings, the claimant seeks to challenge:

(1) the defendant's assessment of her housing needs under section 189A of the Housing Act 1996;

(2) the defendant's compliance with the obligation in section 193 of the Housing Act 1996 to provide her with suitable accommodation; and

(3) the defendant's compliance with the duty in section 17 of the Children Act 1989.

The claimant's application for interim relief was brought only in respect of ground 2, that is in relation to the issue of suitable accommodation under section 193, and was sought in the form of the interim order that was made by Calver J.

The claimant's grounds for interim relief can be summarised as follows: she is currently experiencing significant challenges spending time with...