Godwin v Rossendale Borough Council

Procedural defects in recovering overpaid housing benefit do not automatically invalidate recovery. The court must ask whether the breach caused substantive harm or significant prejudice to the person affected. A person entitled to participate in a Housing Benefit Review Board hearing is ordinarily entitled to remain throughout, subject to exceptional circumstances, but exclusion will not invalidate the decision without demonstrated prejudice. Reasons given by a lay Review Board need only make clear why the parties won or lost; they need not resemble a professional judicial judgment. Where recovery from a landlord is made by deduction from housing benefit payable for another tenant, the notice requirements in paragraph 14(2) of Schedule 6 are engaged when that method of recovery is decided and should precede deduction. Section 75(6) prevents the landlord recovering from the tenant rent discharged by the benefit.

Ryan Godwin was a landlord who received housing benefit directly in respect of tenants at The Copper Kettle. Rossendale Borough Council determined that Carl Fogg had not occupied the premises as his home and treated payments made to Mr Godwin on Mr Fogg’s behalf as a recoverable overpayment. The Council later deducted the amount from housing benefit payable to Mr Godwin in respect of another tenant, Kenneth Clarke.

A Review Board upheld the recovery decision. Mr Godwin brought county court proceedings to recover the sum deducted, alleging defects in the Review Board proceedings and in the notices governing recovery. The county court dismissed the claim, holding that any defects had caused no substantial harm or prejudice. The appeal concerned the effect of those alleged defects and the statutory requirements for recovery by deduction.

1. Appeal dismissed. The county court was an appropriate forum for a claim seeking repayment of housing benefit withheld through alleged statutory non-compliance. Such proceedings were not an abuse of process.
2. The proper approach to procedural defects was whether they caused substantive harm or significant prejudice. The Review Board wrongly excluded Mr Godwin from part of his own hearing while witnesses gave evidence. Regulation 82(2)(c) ordinarily entitled a person affected to remain throughout the hearing, save in exceptional circumstances. However, his representative was present, the witnesses were his own witnesses, and no actual prejudice was shown.
3. The July Review Board was entitled to determine the factual issue afresh after hearing and considering the evidence. It was also entitled to take account of findings made by an earlier differently constituted Board. The issue had not been properly raised before the county court and could not be taken for the first time on appeal.
4. The Board’s reasons were terse but intelligible. A lay tribunal need not provide a professional judge’s detailed judgment. It was sufficient that the reasons made clear that the claim failed because Mr Fogg was found not to occupy the premises as his home.
5. Paragraph 14(2) of Schedule 6 applied cumulatively where there was a recoverable overpayment, recovery was from a landlord, and recovery was to be made by deduction from rent allowance payable for another claimant. A notice complying with that paragraph should precede actual recovery. A further notice was required when the deduction decision was made and carried an appeal right limited to that decision. Any defect caused minimal or no prejudice here.
6. Section 75(6) did not assist Mr Godwin. Its effect was that rent discharged through benefit deducted from the landlord could not again be claimed from the tenant. The landlord therefore lost no valuable right against the tenant.
7. The court endorsed the observation that landlords should ordinarily not be excluded from a claimant’s earlier Review Board hearing where recovery from the landlord was realistically contemplated. It suggested that related applications might, where appropriate, be heard together.

Order: appeal dismissed with costs, subject to detailed assessment.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): appeal from the Manchester County Court dismissed; costs subject to detailed assessment.
• Manchester County Court: His Honour Judge Maddocks dismissed Mr Godwin’s claim on 26 September 2001, holding that the Council had followed the statutory procedure and that any defects caused no substantial harm or prejudice.