Legal Updates

In W v Lambeth LBC (3 May 2002) the court of appeal, very unusually, reversed its own decision from only six months previously. The case concerned the powers of local authorities to provide accommodation to children in need and their parents under section 17 of the Children Act 1989.

In this case W, the mother of two children born in 1987 and 1998, was evicted from her home in February 2001. She was found by the local housing authority (Lambeth) to be intentionally homeless because there were substantial arrears of rent. She applied immediately to the local social services authority (also Lambeth) for assistance in securing private sector housing for herself and her two children as a family unit, but the authority declined to help her. She was able to find temporary accommodation with a niece between August 2001 and January 2002. She said that no other member of her family was then able to help her to house her family.

At her solicitor's request Lambeth social services carried out assessments of the needs of her two children in January 2001. The assessing officer found nothing exceptional in the case, and said that the council's social services department did not provide accommodation for families (para 10). These proceedings were initiated to challenge the result of those assessments.

On 8 March 2002 the court of appeal granted W permission to apply for judicial review and directed that the substantive application be heard by the court of appeal (para 1). On 9 April the council completed further assessments of the children's needs on the basis, which it disputed, that it did have power to provide assistance to the family. It again declined to make the provision sought. It was these assessments which were under challenge at the hearing.

The court of appeal held that the majority decision of R(A) v Lambeth was made without full citation of all the relevant statutes and that it was therefore not obliged to follow it. It held that a local social services authority does possess the power under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to help a family who have been found to be intentionally homeless (or are otherwise not entitled to help from their local housing authority) with assistance towards their housing needs as a family.

Whether the authority chooses to exercise its powers is a matter for its discretion, and the court of appeal declined to interfere with Lambeth's decision in the present case, although the court expressed the hope that Lambeth's children and families division would reconsider the case of W and her family carefully in the light of its judgement (para 87).

Comment: Although it is to be welcomed that the Court of Appeal has rapidly returned the law to its more sensible state that social services can provide accommodation to children, the judgement leaves things very much in the hands of the council whether to provide assistance or not.

In a local authority such as Lambeth simply being a family with young children with nowhere to live may not be enough to trigger the exercise of the power if the council thinks the reality is that if it does not provide assistance the family will find some accommodation somewhere (eg by staying with family or friends). Challenging decisions of local authorities will become increasingly difficult once they have considered and rejected the discretion to provide services in a particular case.

Stephen Cragg

Doughty Street Chambers