Crossley v City of Westminster

For priority-need homelessness decisions, vulnerability for an “other special reason” is a freestanding statutory category. The question is whether, when homeless, the applicant is less able to fend for himself than an ordinary homeless person, so that injury or detriment will result. A recovering drug addict at risk of relapse is neither automatically vulnerable nor automatically excluded; the case lies in a fact-sensitive grey area. The authority must address the composite question with particular care and evaluate material evidence, including childhood care, support networks and relapse risk. It must not artificially separate causes producing one set of effects. General concerns about drug use on council estates are irrelevant to vulnerability, except insofar as they bear on abstinence and prognosis.

Stephen Crossley, a long-term rough sleeper and recovering drug addict, challenged Westminster’s refusal to treat him as in priority need. The council’s statutory review concluded that he could remain abstinent and fend for himself while homeless, and that neither drug use, mental health, time in care nor other circumstances made him vulnerable. HH Judge Collins CBE, sitting at Central London County Court, allowed his appeal under section 204 of the Housing Act 1996, quashed the review decision and required reconsideration. The council appealed, arguing that there had been no error of law and that the judge had substituted his factual assessment. The central issue was whether the review letter had lawfully engaged with the evidence and the composite question of vulnerability under section 189(1)(c).

The appeal was dismissed. The order quashing the council’s review decision stood, with reconsideration to be undertaken on up-to-date evidence.

1. Section 204 of the Housing Act 1996 gave the County Court jurisdiction to intervene only for an error of law. That included an error susceptible to judicial review, as explained in Nipa Begum v Tower Hamlets LBC [2000] 1 WLR 306. The issue was therefore not whether the judge preferred his own factual assessment, but whether the review decision was legally flawed.
2. Section 189(1)(c) created a freestanding category of vulnerability for an “other special reason”. It required difficulties graver than those ordinarily faced by homeless persons. Applying the approach in R v Camden LBC, ex p Pereira (1998) 31 HLR 317, the decision-maker had to ask whether the applicant was, when homeless, less able to fend for himself than an ordinary homeless person, so that injury or detriment would result. The comparison was necessarily imprecise and judgmental: Osmani v Camden LBC [2004] EWCA Civ 1706.
3. A recovering drug addict at risk of relapse was neither necessarily vulnerable as a matter of law nor excluded from the category. Such cases lay within a legitimate grey area, but required especially careful attention to the statutory criteria, purposes and evidence. Vulnerability was a single composite question. The authority had to consider whether the applicant’s condition, including relevant childhood care, made him vulnerable, rather than separating vulnerability from its causes.
4. The review officer had failed partly to acknowledge, take into account and evaluate material evidence. The review letter compressed the history of repeated relapse, made an unjustifiably confident assessment of continued abstinence, and inadequately addressed evidence concerning benefits, management of daily affairs and the consequences of the applicant’s time in care. This failure to engage with a central question was sufficient to establish an error of law.
5. The court further observed that drug addiction alone could not constitute a special reason capable of being addressed by housing, although vulnerability to relapse while living on the streets might be relevant. Where two prescribed causes produced one set of effects, those effects should not be artificially distributed between the causes. General concerns about drug users’ impact on council estates were irrelevant under section 189, save insofar as they bore on the dependability and prognosis of abstinence.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Dismissed Westminster City Council’s appeal and left standing the order quashing the statutory review decision.
• Central London County Court: HH Judge Collins CBE allowed Crossley’s appeal under section 204 of the Housing Act 1996, quashed the council’s decision and required reconsideration.