law updates

This case involved the meaning of ‘housing-related conduct’ in section 153A(1) of the Housing Act 1996 as substituted by section 26 of the Police and Justice Act 2006. The wording was defined in the 1996 Act as meaning ‘directly or indirectly relating to or affecting the housing management functions of a relevant landlord’. The defendant had been a council tenant but had been evicted from his council home following two anti-social behaviour injunctions for criminal damage. The appeal focused on the third injunction following the eviction and whether, since he was no longer a council tenant, the council could issue an injunction regarding conduct that was ‘housing-related’ under s.153A. The defendant argued that a narrow literal interpretation should be taken, in that the section only related to council tenants, but the Court of Appeal disagreed and took a broad purposive view. They decided that it would be wrong for a council to be powerless to protect the defendant’s former neighbours from his continued vendetta. They decided that it would therefore be wrong to refuse to allow an injunction simply because the defendant was no longer a council tenant and that his conduct as a whole was ‘housing-related’.

Here the claimant had argued that the defendant, Birmingham City Council, was in breach of its duty under section 193(5) of the Housing Act 1996 to provide suitable accommodation. The section states that a local authority has such a duty to a homeless applicant until, having been informed by the authority of the possible consequence of refusal, the applicant refuses an offer of accommodation which the authority are satisfied is suitable for him and the authority notify him that they regard themselves as having discharged their duty. The Court of Appeal decided that the words ‘inform’ and ‘notify’ did not mean the same thing. They felt that ‘inform’ required more from the local authority, in that they had to ‘make sure that it was understandable’ and thus ‘inform’ went further than to simply ‘notify’. Also the test was objective as to whether such correspondence did inform the claimant of the consequence of refusal. Provided the notification letter was written in plain English the information would not be judged by the varying extent of the claimant’s understanding of English.