A London council acted unlawfully when it refused to grant emergency housing priority to a mother living with her severely disabled son and two other children in a damp, mould-ridden one-bedroom flat, the High Court has ruled.
Mr Justice Coppel found that Hackney Council’s appeal decision, which placed the family in Band B of its housing register rather than the emergency Band A category, was riddled with legal errors – including the failure to consider crucial medical evidence, the application of the wrong legal test, and a conclusion so at odds with the evidence before the decision-maker that it was irrational.
The family – a mother, father and three children aged 8, 6 and 2 at the time of the decision – have been living in a third-floor, one-bedroom flat with no lift access. Their middle child, referred to only as LLY, has severe autism, global developmental delay, a movement disorder and the cognitive development of a child aged 12 to 18 months. Medical professionals from Hackney Ark Children’s Centre, the family’s GP and LLY’s school all wrote urgent letters describing conditions they said posed a serious risk to his life and development.
Those letters described a property rendered effectively uninhabitable by severe damp and mould, causing constant respiratory illness across the family. Five people were sharing a single bed, causing chronic sleep deprivation that worsened LLY’s behaviour and affected his siblings’ ability to learn. LLY’s speech therapists had identified a choking hazard worsened by lack of space to seat him properly at mealtimes. The third-floor location, combined with his lack of danger awareness, created serious fall risks including the possibility of falling from windows.
Despite all of this, the council’s decision-maker concluded there was ‘no indication these conditions are worsened by the property or living conditions’ – a finding the judge described as irrational and inconsistent with clear evidence she appeared not to have read. The decision-maker also applied the wrong legal test, asking whether the family faced a ‘high risk to life and limb’ rather than the correct, lower threshold of an ‘immediate risk to wellbeing.’
The council’s handling of the subsequent legal challenge also drew criticism from the judge. Having recognised the decision was flawed, the council mounted a full defence of it in court documents while simultaneously seeking to pressure the family into withdrawing their claim, without explaining why the decision was being reconsidered. The judge found this fell well short of the candour and cooperation with the court that public bodies are required to demonstrate in judicial review proceedings.
The court granted a declaration that the appeal decision was unlawful. The council must now reconsider the family’s case from scratch. The family have been living in the flat for well over 18 months since the original decision.
Leave a Reply