R v Eastleigh Borough Council, Ex parte Betts (Betts, Ex parte, Eastleigh Borough Council v Betts)

For the referral provisions of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, the decisive question is whether the applicant has a local connection with the relevant area. Normal residence is a statutory source from which such a connection may arise, but it is not itself the ultimate question.

A local connection must be real and subsisting. It may be built through residence, employment, family associations or special circumstances. A housing authority may use a reasonable policy or guideline, including a residence-duration norm, if it remains willing to consider the facts of the individual case.

Mr and Mrs Betts became homeless after moving from the Blaby area to Eastleigh. Eastleigh accepted that they were homeless, had a priority need and were not intentionally homeless, but referred responsibility for permanent accommodation to Blaby under section 5 of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977.

Webster J dismissed the applicants’ judicial-review motion. The Court of Appeal allowed their appeal, holding that Eastleigh had treated a six-month residence guideline as decisive and had misconstrued normal residence. Eastleigh appealed to the House of Lords. The central issue was whether its opinion that the applicants lacked a local connection with Eastleigh was legally defective.

1. Appeal allowed unanimously. Lord Brightman delivered the substantive speech. Lords Fraser of Tullybelton, Wilberforce, Edmund-Davies and Roskill expressly agreed. The House reversed the Court of Appeal and restored Webster J’s order dismissing the judicial-review motion.

2. Per Lord Brightman, section 5(1) of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 turns on the existence of a local connection, not on the freestanding question whether the applicant is presently normally resident in the notifying authority’s area. Section 18(1) identifies the exclusive sources from which a local connection may arise: normal residence, employment, family associations or special circumstances. It does not permit those factors simply to be substituted for the statutory expression in section 5.

3. A person may become normally resident in a place very quickly, consistently with R v Barnet London Borough Council, ex parte Shah [1983] 2 WLR 16. That fact alone does not establish the real and subsisting local connection required for a referral decision. A connection based on residence, employment or family association ordinarily has to be built up and established.

4. The six-month guideline in the inter-authority agreement was a sensible norm for determining whether residence had established a local connection. Following the principle illustrated by British Oxygen Company Ltd v Board of Trade [1971] AC 610, an authority exercising administrative discretion may adopt and generally apply a policy, provided it does not close its mind to the facts of an individual case.

5. Eastleigh’s decision was not shown to have applied the guideline rigidly or to have mistaken the statutory question. Its conclusion that four months’ residence had not established a local connection with Eastleigh was lawful. Eastleigh was therefore relieved of the section 4(5) duty to secure permanent accommodation.

• House of Lords: allowed Eastleigh’s appeal unanimously and reversed the Court of Appeal’s order: [1983] 2 AC 613.

• Court of Appeal: allowed Mr and Mrs Betts’ appeal from Webster J and held that Eastleigh had misdirected itself by rigidly applying a six-month residence rule.

• High Court (Queen’s Bench Division): Webster J dismissed the judicial-review motion on 26 October 1982. That order was restored by the House of Lords.