Goodger v London Borough Of Ealing

Procedural fairness in public-law decision-making is context-specific. Disclosure and opportunity for representations must be assessed by reference to the particular issue before the decision-maker and the material needed to address it. A failure to provide a file promptly does not automatically invalidate a decision. Where the affected person knows the case against him and the undisclosed material could not affect the issue being decided, the delay does not make the hearing unfair. A court should not quash or remit a decision merely because a different outcome is conceivable when, on the relevant facts and issue, only one lawful conclusion was possible.

Mr Goodger applied to the London Borough of Ealing for accommodation as a homeless person. Ealing accepted that he had a priority need but decided that he was intentionally homeless under section 191(1) of the Housing Act 1996, because he had lost his former accommodation following a serious criminal offence committed there.

The Review Panel upheld that decision. On an appeal under section 204 of the Act, His Honour Judge Oppenheimer quashed the review decision for procedural unfairness because Ealing had disclosed the housing file only five or six working days before the paper review hearing. The central issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the late disclosure made the review unfair and justified quashing or remitting the decision.

1. Appeal allowed. The County Court’s decision was reversed and the Review Panel’s decision of 17 May 2001 was reinstated.
2. Fairness, including disclosure and opportunity for representations, is not to be applied mechanically. The reviewing court must identify the decision under challenge and ask what fairness required in relation to the specific issue before the decision-maker.
3. The only issue for Ealing’s review was intentional homelessness. That issue depended on whether Mr Goodger had been evicted and whether the eviction resulted from deliberate conduct within section 191(1) of the Housing Act 1996. The relevant facts had already been conclusively determined through the earlier possession proceedings and the criminal conviction.
4. The housing file could not have affected that issue. Mr Goodger and his advisers knew the substance and detail of the case against him, and any proposed arguments, including mitigation or duress, were available without the file. The late disclosure therefore did not make the Review Panel’s consideration unfair.
5. The principle stated by Lord Mustill in Crown v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Doody [1994] 1 AC 531, that fairness will often require disclosure of the gist of the case, did not assist the appellant because he already knew the case he had to answer and had no relevant answer capable of affecting the outcome.
6. Ealing was not required to investigate whether Hounslow or the possession court might have acted differently, nor to reconsider rights of occupation or whether a suspended possession order might have been appropriate. Those matters were behind the curtain of the earlier proceedings.
7. Remittal was unjustified because, applying the correct approach, no conclusion other than intentional homelessness could be reached.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): allowed the appeal, reversed the decision of His Honour Judge Oppenheimer in Brentford County Court, and reinstated the Review Panel’s decision.