R v Hillingdon London Borough Council, Ex parte Puhlhofer (Puhlhofer, Ex parte, Puhlhofer v Hillingdon London Borough Council)

Under section 1 of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, “accommodation” bears its ordinary English meaning. It is not qualified by “appropriate” or “reasonable”, and statutory standards governing fitness or overcrowding cannot be imported into the definition.

Whether premises amount to accommodation is principally a question of fact for the local authority. Overcrowding may nevertheless be relevant where a space is incapable of accommodating the applicant and the family members who normally reside with the applicant. Courts should respect factual decisions entrusted by Parliament to a public body. Judicial review remains available for statutory misconstruction, abuse of power, bad faith, procedural irregularity or Wednesbury unreasonableness amounting to obvious perversity.

The applicants, a married couple with two children, occupied one room in a guest house arranged through the respondent local authority. The room contained beds and a cradle but lacked cooking and clothes-washing facilities. The authority decided that the family was neither homeless nor threatened with homelessness because accommodation remained available to them.

The Divisional Court quashed that decision and declared that the applicants were homeless persons in priority need. It considered the accommodation so inappropriate, particularly because of overcrowding, that no reasonable authority could regard it as accommodation under section 1 of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. The Court of Appeal accepted the authority's challenge, although its members differed over the proper construction of “accommodation”.

The applicants appealed. The central questions were what constitutes accommodation under section 1 and when a court may review a local authority's factual determination under the Act.

1. The appeal was dismissed unanimously. The Court of Appeal's order was affirmed. Lord Brightman delivered the leading speech, with which Lords Keith, Roskill, Brandon and Mackay agreed. Lord Roskill additionally endorsed the warning against misuse of judicial review where Parliament has entrusted decisions to a public body.

2. “Accommodation” in sections 1 and 4 of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 bears its ordinary English meaning. Parliament placed no qualifying adjective before it. Neither “appropriate” nor “reasonable” could be implied. The statutory tests for unfitness or overcrowding under the Housing Act 1957 were equally inapplicable.

   The observations in Parr v Wyre Borough Council (1982) 2 H.L.R. 71 concerned the quality of accommodation offered in discharge of an authority's duty. They did not justify reading “appropriate” into the threshold definition in section 1.

3. Section 17 could not be used to qualify the meaning of accommodation in section 1. Section 17(1) assumes that accommodation existed and asks whether it was reasonable for the applicant to cease occupying it. Section 17(4) permits consideration of local housing conditions only when answering that question. Neither subsection addresses the inherent quality required before premises can be called accommodation.

4. Whether premises can properly be described as accommodation is a factual question for the local authority. Overcrowding is not irrelevant, although the statutory overcrowding standard cannot be imported. Premises which ordinarily constitute accommodation may cease to do so for a particular household if the space is incapable of accommodating the applicant together with the family members who normally reside there. On the evidence, the authority was entitled to find that the guest-house room was accommodation and that the applicants were not homeless.

5. Where Parliament leaves the existence of a fact to a public body's judgment, the court must respect that allocation of responsibility unless the body acts perversely. Judicial review remains available for misconstruction of the statute, abuse of power, bad faith, procedural irregularity or Wednesbury unreasonableness verging on absurdity, consistently with Reg v Secretary of State for the Environment, Ex parte Nottinghamshire County Council [1986] 2 W.L.R. 1. Because judicial review is discretionary, great restraint should be exercised when granting leave for challenges which merely invite courts to monitor local housing decisions.

1. House of Lords: The applicants' appeal was dismissed unanimously. The Court of Appeal's order of 24 July 1985 was affirmed.

2. Court of Appeal: The local authority successfully challenged the Divisional Court's decision. The court held that the authority had material upon which it could properly decide that the applicants were not homeless, although the Lords Justices differed in their construction of “accommodation”.

3. Divisional Court: The authority's decision was quashed. The court declared that the applicants were homeless persons in priority need because no reasonable authority could regard the overcrowded room as appropriate accommodation under section 1 of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977.