Maughan, R (on the application of) v Leicester City Council

When deciding whether to recover possession from an unauthorised travellers’ encampment, a local authority must make sufficient enquiries and conduct a fair balance between the public interest and the occupants’ welfare, health and education needs. It need not establish that alternative accommodation is available or complete investigations under every potentially relevant statutory regime. The question is whether the authority has lawfully applied its policy on the information reasonably available.

For interim accommodation under the Housing Act 1996, a traveller’s cultural aversion to conventional accommodation requires careful consideration, but does not make such accommodation automatically unsuitable. Recent housing history and current evidence may be considered together.

The claimant, a traveller with a wife and four children, challenged Leicester City Council’s decisions to obtain possession of land occupied by his family and to offer hostel accommodation under its interim homelessness duty.

The Council had repeatedly tolerated the encampment before deciding on 14 January 2004 to commence possession proceedings. It confirmed that decision on 28 April after considering updated medical, educational and welfare information. The claimant also challenged the Council’s 9 February decision to offer conventional hostel accommodation pending determination of his homelessness application.

The central issues were whether the eviction decisions involved inadequate enquiries, failures of procedural fairness or disregard of relevant matters, and whether the interim accommodation offered was suitable in light of the claimant’s asserted cultural aversion to bricks-and-mortar housing.

1. The claim was dismissed. The possession decisions and the offer of interim accommodation were lawful. The interim injunction was discharged. The claimant was ordered to pay the defendant’s costs, subject to the usual public funding proviso.
2. The Council’s enforcement policy correctly reflected the required approach to unauthorised encampments. The decision-maker had to make meaningful enquiries and balance the encampment’s impact against the occupants’ social, welfare, health and educational needs. There was no additional requirement to show that an alternative site was available or that all welfare issues had been eliminated.
3. The Council was entitled to consider the history of complaints, environmental problems, use of the land, loss of public amenity and the period for which the encampment had been tolerated. Although further health and education reports had been requested, the information available was sufficient. The later material would not have altered the essential picture or the result.
4. The confirmatory decision of 28 April lawfully considered the updated evidence. Describing the medical conditions as stabilised did not mean that they had been resolved. The Council had implicitly considered possible educational disruption and was entitled to conclude that eviction would not prevent the children from receiving education. The disputed matters concerning use of the car park and the possible arrival of other travellers did not require specific notification to the claimant before the decision.
5. The court did not need to decide whether homelessness powers were legally linked to the eviction decision. Since the interim accommodation decision was lawful, the claimant could not establish that the encampment was the only suitable accommodation or that the homelessness decision affected the eviction decision.
6. Applying R (Price) v Carmarthenshire County Council, (2003) EWHC 42 (Admin), the Council had properly considered the claimant’s traveller culture, his current asserted aversion to conventional accommodation and his recent history of living in Council housing. Conventional hostel accommodation was not automatically unsuitable. Further medical enquiries were unnecessary on the evidence.