Legal Aid is supposed to be available for homeless people who need assistance in refusal by a local authority to provide them with accommodation which they are entitled to. 

The problem with the means assessment system is that a homeless person who is not receiving a passported benefit or an extremely low wage is likely to be ineligible for assistance. This is because they do not have any housing costs to be deducted from their income when calculating their disposable income.  If they had temporary accommodation which they were liable to pay rent for this rent could be taken into account but once they are homeless there is no housing cost and their disposable income goes up to a level which will often take them over the limit of £733.00 per month. 

To illustrate this; I was approached recently by a woman who had just been evicted from her temporary accommodation along with her daughter because the council had found her to be intentionally homeless. She needed help challenging this decision. Unfortunately, if she had come to see me before her temporary accommodation was cancelled she would have been eligible but once she had been evicted her wages and tax credits left her with a  monthly disposable income of £1,286.32. This took her over the eligibility limit by £553.33 which was less than her rent had been. This has the absurd effect that someone who has no accommodation and is therefore in more pressing need for the assistance is unable to get the assistance which they would have got before she lost her temporary accommodation. 

I wondered if there might be some way around this problem. I sent an email to the Legal Aid Agency’s Contact Civil Team which read:

I have recently been asked to help a homeless single parent. Who had been evicted from her temporary accommodationprovided by the council and is staying with a friend

She is working in a low paid job and would have been eligible for assistance under Legal Help up to the point when she was evicted from her temporary accommodation. However at that point she ceased to have any housing costs. This meant that the deductions from her income were reduced and her disposable income was increased above the eligibility limit.

The effect of the above is that whilst the client would have been eligible for assistance up to the point when she was evicted from her temporary accommodation she was not eligible once she had actually been evicted. I trust that you will agree that it cannot have been the intention of those who prepared the eligibility rules to exclude someone as a result of their need for assistance becoming more acute as in this case and that they should be penalised for having no accommodation which was the reason they sought assistance. Please can you let me know if there is any way in which a provider can assist a homeless person such as this under the Legal Help scheme or why it is considered appropriate for them not to receive assistance.

I received the following response. 

Legal aid is available to fund cases that are within the scope of the civil scheme (as per LASPO Act), for those who are financially eligible and whose case satisfies the merits test.  The means test is laid down in the regulations to determine who is financially eligible for funding; the limited circumstances where a waiver applies are set out in regulations 9-12 of the Civil Legal Aid (Financial Resources and Payment for Services) Regulations 2013, a waiver does not appear to be applicable in this case . You have indicated your concern that the individual in question does not qualify within the income limit based on her current income and outgoings.  Your concern is noted. With any scheme which assists vulnerable people, there will appear to be ‘hard cases’ at the margin.

This response can be summarised as confirming that there is no way round the fact that someone can lose their entitlement to Legal Aid based on their means as a result of losing their temporary accommodation. It is good to know that my concern has been noted by the Legal Aid Agency but disappointing that it is not shared. I guess its not the responsibility of staff at Contact Civil to agitate for defects in system to be repaired.

I think that there is a clear need here for the means test rules to be amended so as to allow people who have no accommodation to avoid being penalised for having no housing costs. This could be achieved by treating such people in the same way that people on passported benefits are treated. The Legal Help form could ask whether the applicant is on a passported benefit and/or has no accommodation of their own. 

This question came up last week when I was going through the bank statement of a new client whom I proposed to advise and assist under the Legal Help Scheme. She was receiving Income Support and entitled to be treated as receiving a passported benefit for Legal Aid purposes.

What worried me when going through the bank statement was that whilst there was clear evidence of payment in of Income Support there were other payments in such as child support and some other payments. I was not sure how high the level of this additional income would have to be before somebody at the Legal Aid Agency might refuse payment for the work on this case because I was said to have failed to adequately consider whether the client was property in receipt of Income Support.

I found an explanation what properly in receipt of a passported benefit means at paragraph 4 on page 12 of the Legal Aid Agency's Means Assessment Guidance. This states:-

The passporting benefit must be currently in payment (e.g. the individual will not be passported if the benefit claim is still being processed or if payments are suspended pending a fraud investigation) and the individual must be legally entitled to the payment. If the passporting benefit is in payment but there is a suspicion that an individual may not be “properly” in receipt—e.g. representations have been made against the individual’s means or the individual’s own declarations have indicated that relevant facts such as a partner, employment, sources of income and capital etc. have not been advised to the benefit office—their legal aid claim will not be passported.

The answer would therefore appear to be whether the information provided by the client gives rise to a suspicion that they are not entitled to the passported benefit which they are receiving. Following the withdrawal of Legal Aid for Welfare Benefits work the Legal Aid Agency can not expect most of us to have a specialist eye for possible non entitlement. I think therefore that as long was we can record that we have no suspicion that the information provided by the client means that they are not entitled to the passported benefit which they are receiving we should not be at risk of not getting paid.

I think that the danger signs when looking at the bank statements or other information provided by the client will be situations such as:-

• The client's net income for the month up to the date when they sign the Legal Help is more than the net income limit for non passported benefits  - ie £733.00.
• The client's wages are more than the Universal Credit Work Allowances.

This is not meant to be definitive advice on this question. I would welcome any comments on here or by email to wflack63@gmail.com If anyone would like to correct what I have said or add to it.

I have had a list of solicitors which I give to people whose cases I can't take for a while. I have now put it on the site .  You can access it via the link at the top of the page.

I hope to add to the list so please let me know the contact details of anyone you think should be added. I can amend the list to include organisations outside London if I get the details.

At the bottom of the page is a link to the list as a Google Document which you should be able to print or copy. Please let me know if you can't.

Here is a very valuable document for anyone who like me regularly issues homelessness appeals in the Central London County Court pursuant to Section 204 of the Housing Act 1996.

For years I have had to worry about ensuring that hard copies of the Court papers were received at the Court within 21 days of the date when the Section 202 Review decision letter was received. That now appears to be a thing of the past. Here is the letter as a PDF.

I am extremely grateful to Mrs Begum at the Court for providing a very detailed response to my queries about whether Appellant Notices and supporting documents can be sent to the Court by email as PDFs or whether it is still necessary for hard copies to be sent to the Court. As can be seen from her letter of 15 January, the answer is that they can as long as you have a PBA Account with HM Courts & Tribunal Service for paying the fee.

So far there has only been limited guidance available from the Courts as to what can and can't be issued digitally. Please leave a comment if you are aware of any other guidance. All I had been able to find was the Courts Email Guidance. The attached letter was sent after I had to complain after Central London County Court initially accepted and then sent back an Appeal which I had issued by sending papers by email only. I had been sending Application Notice in this way and having them issued without problems.. My complaint led to the Court agreeing to issue my appeal. As part of the complaint I asked for clarification of the Court's approach.

When I wrote to the Court I referred them to the  Bryan McGuire QC memorial lecture on homelessness given by HHJ Jan Luba QC in April 2017 (Link here) which set out at paragraph 111 a number of very useful Pointers For Appellants. These included a request to cut down on paper work and help save the rain forests. I asked for guidance on those like me who act for appellants might take up the call. I have had a further response from HHJ Luba QC in which he reminds me that Ms Begum as a court official should not be treated as stating what the actual Court procedure is but only as setting her understanding of it. He also suggested that at some point in the future the Courts will be accepting Appeal Bundles in digital format. I think that they should have started doing this some years ago but I am very glad that they are at least allowing us to issue by email.

Since receiving the above letter I have set another appeal to Central London County Court for issue without sending any paper copies. I sent an email to the address: enquiries@centrallondon.countycourt.gsi.gov.uk  which set out the following text:

Part 3 of The Immigration Act 2014 is likely to come into force nationally shortly following a 6 month pilot in the West Midlands.  I won't go into detail about the Act here. Further information can be obtained from blog posts by  Nearly Legal - Tessa Shepperson - Trisan Hyatt at Invictus Chambers  and from the You.Gov website. In a nutshell, the Act provides that landlords who rent properties to tenants who do not have leave to enter or remain in the UK will be liable to be fined. This is designed to stop private landlords from renting properties to anyone who cannot show that are entitled to be in the UK.

As with previous initiatives to make like difficult for migrants this Act is likely to add to the existing burden on local authority Social Services Departments in providing assistance to those poorest members of society who are excluded from mainstream benefits and services.  It will once again fall to Social Services staff to prevent people who have children with them or have special needs from becoming street homeless. This is because Schedule 3 of the Act excludes certain tenancy agreements from those which cannot be let to persons without leave to enter remain. These include accommodation provided by local authorities.

Paragraph 7(1) excludes from the reach of the Act any agreement—

(a)under which accommodation is provided to a person as a result of a duty or relevant power that is imposed or conferred on a local authority by an enactment (whether or not provided by the local authority), and
(b) which is not excluded by another provision of this Schedule.
(2) “Relevant power” means a power that is exercised for, or in connection with, a purpose of providing accommodation to a person who is homeless or is threatened with homelessness
(3) In sub-paragraph (2) the reference to a person who is homeless or is threatened with homelessness is to be read in accordance with—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, section 175 of the Housing Act 1996;
(b) in relation to Scotland, section 24 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987;
(c) in relation to Northern Ireland, Article 3 of the Housing (Northern Ireland) Order 1988 (S.I. 1988/1990 (N.I. 23)).

This is going to mean that overstayers or other persons who are not able to obtain private sector accommodation directly from private landlords or letting agencies and are facing street homeless are going to have to apply to Social Services for assistance. This is of course already happening where the persons not have enough money to obtain or keep a private tenancy. To these persons there will now be added those who would have been able to afford to pay for private accommodation but cannot find a landlord who is willing to take them on because of the new Act.

I say that it will be Social Services who have to do the work because staff in Housing Departments are generally able to refuse to provide any assistance where the applicant is not "eligible" for housing  due their immigration status pursuant to  Section 185 of the Housing Act 1996.   Unlike their colleagues in the Housing Department, the staff in the Social Services Department must assist these applicants even if they are excluded from receiving assistance under Schedule 3 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 where a breach of their human rights would arise if assistance was withheld. Those who might have been housed under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996 because they have children living them will be seeking accommodation by way of assistance under Children Act 1989 and those who would have been housed due to medical conditions rendering them vulnerable would be asking for accommodation under the Care Act 2014.

Social Services Departments in many London Boroughs have already had to set up No Recourse To Public Funds teams to deal with persons facing destitution because their immigration status prevents them from receiving mainstream housing and benefits. They have to try and find housing for those applicants whom they are not able to turn away in the same way that the Housing Department can.  This already places a considerable strain on staff who only have limited resources and are unlikely to have very much housing training. Although it is common for Social Services Departments or Legal Departments to write to me saying that Social Services are not  "quasi letting agency" the Immigration Act 2014 takes them another step along the way to becoming just that.

Social Services Department staff will soon face further demands for assistance from people whose only needs are housing related in that they cannot obtain private sector tenancies or social housing. Staff will have to find landlords for these persons and arrange for a tenancy to be granted for them in a way that brings it within Paragraph 7 of Schedule 3 of the new Act.  If they are able to do so they will be acting as a filter which negates the effect of the Immigration Act 2014 by bringing the new tenancy agreement within the class of excluded agreements set out in Schedule 3 and allowing the landlord to grant a tenancy to the person because it is now provided as a consequence of a duty or power imposed or conferred upon a local authority. Alternatively, if a private landlord cannot be found they are going to have to house the applicants themselves.

A practical step for Social Services  staff might be to provide homeless persons without leave to remain who can find landlords with a letter indicating that the council will be able to assist in endorsing a request for the tenancy if necessary if the landlord were minded to grant it but for the risk of a fine under the Immigration Act 2014. Having said that it is likely that by breaking cover and having to reveal their immigration status in order to avoid homelessness an overstayer would become known to the authorities and have to stop working pending the outcome of an application for leave to remain in the UK. This is likely to cut off their income and stop them from being able to afford to pay for private accommodation themselves. As such they will be added to the large group of people facing destitution without assistance and funding from Social Services.

After reading the the Nearly Legal post this week on R (Faizi) v Brent LBC I thought I would write something about how I have found Section 204A of the Housing Act 1996 to be of no use to homeless persons trying to avoid the loss of their temporary accommodation while they appealed against a decision that they were not entitled to be housed.

The interesting thing about the Faizi case as spotted by Nearly Legal was that Hadon-Cave J refused the application for Judicial Review based on consideration of the issues which Ms Fazi had raised instead of dismissing it for the more obvious reason that she had issued proceedings in the wrong Court. This would be because she was not entitled to apply for Judicial Review as she had a right of appeal to the County Court under Section 204A of the Housing Act 1996.

After looking up the old case law I remembered that the two leading cases on Section 204A appeals were infact Judicial Reviews themselves. Those are R v Camden LBC Ex p Mohammed [1997] 30 HLR 315 and R v Brighton and Hove Council Ex p Nacion (1999) 31 HLR 1095.  This was because they concerned the exercise of the council's discretion to accommodate the applicant pending the outcome of a Section 202 Review where the challenge does have to be made by way of Judicial Review proceedings unlike the exercise of what is effectively the same discretion to house pending appeal which has to be challenged in the County Court under Section 204 of the Housing Act 1996.

Things started off alright back in 1997 with Mohammed where it was held that in considering whether to exercise its discretion to house the council should consider three questions:-

(1) the merits of the substantive case,
(2) whether there was new material on review that could effect the decision,
(3) the personal circumstances of the applicant.

After considering the facts of the the case the Court held that the decision not to accommodate pending review was unlawful. That seems fair enough.

Things took a severe turn for the worse two years later in Nacion where the Court of Appeal held that as long as the council had addressed the three questions set above as identified in Mohammed any challenge of the refusal to accommodate pending review would be almost certain to fail.

Tuckey LJ said:  “Where a council, as in this case, has obviously considered the material factors... identified in [R v Camden LBC Ex p Mohammed], it is an entirely futile exercise to seek to say that in some way that discretion was wrongly exercised by coming to the High Court for judicial review and saying, as this applicant does, ‘We have an arguable case on the appeal to the County Court’. Applications for judicial review on this basis should be strongly discouraged. It is only in a very exceptional case that there will really be any reasonable prospect of interesting the court by way of judicial review to interfere with the exercise of the very broad discretion which the council have ...”

In the same case, Lord Woolf MR said: “If an authority refuses even to consider exercising its discretion… then I can understand that judicial review may be an appropriate remedy. Apart from that situation, I have difficulty in envisaging cases where application for judicial review will be appropriate.”

My reading of this is that where the council can show that they have ticked the box marked "thought about it"  and have not made some gross error in doing so the Courts will not interfere with their decision. This is because the court will only consider whether the three questions have been answered and not how the council answered them.

In 2003 the Court of Appeal held in Francis v Kensington & Chelsea LBC [2003] 2 All ER 1052 that the principles set out in Nacion in relation to accommodation pending review should be applied by the County Court when considering an appeal under Section 204A and that was that. Since then I have not heard of Section 204A being of any use to anybody.  Presumably some people have won appeals which I have not heard about but you would have to be a very brave barrister to advise that a case had a good prospect of success of passing Tuckley LJ's almost impossible test. Further details of the obstacles that these cases put in the way of homeless persons can be found on this article on the Hardwicke Chambers web site from 2003. I am not aware of any cases since then which have improved the situation.

The ruling in Nacion and Tuckey LJ's and Woolf MR's comments reflect extremely badly on the judiciary. Where Parliament has created rights of review and appeal for homeless persons against decisions to deny them assistance which they are entitled to it should not be an "entirely futile" exercise and persons should not be "strongly discouraged" from asking a Judge to require a council to give effect to those rights. It is a great injustice if applicants have to become street homeless whilst waiting for a review or appeal decision to overturn an unlawful refusal to house them.

The good news is that where homeless applicants face the loss of their temporary accommodation pending review or appeal they may still get some protection from street homelessness from the Courts if they have children or if they are vulnerable on medical grounds and the council refuses them temporary accommodation. The secondary duties/powers which councils have to assist such persons under the Children Act 1989 and more gently the Children Act 2004 and Care Act 2014 are open to enforcement through Judicial Review and do not face the same restrictions as apply to Section 204A.

I have created a Resources Section to this site which I hope will be useful reference tool for people interested in this area of law.I have started off by focussing mainly on homelessness. I have included the main Acts, Statutory Guidance and cases.

At the moment the sections for each case are mostly limited to a link to the transcript of the judgement with the heading Summary followed by blank space. I hope to be able to work my though the cases and to update the entries with summaries and comments.

I have included a Comments facility for the cases as with blog posts so that discussion of the cases can take place. If you do have anything to say about the cases please add your comments even if I have not yet added the summary and comments. If you think I have missed out any important Statutes, Guidance or case-law please let me know and I will try to add it. Please let me have any transcripts or links if they are available on link to cases which you think should be included.