William v London Borough of Wandsworth

On an appeal under section 204 of the Housing Act 1996, the county court exercises a jurisdiction akin to judicial review. Questions of fact entrusted to a housing authority may be disturbed for misconstruction of established facts only where obvious perversity is shown.

A homelessness review decision must identify the deliberate act or omission which caused the loss of accommodation and give proper, adequate and intelligible reasons. The decision must be read fairly as a whole and in its known factual context. Judicial exactitude is unnecessary.

Joint legal ownership and joint mortgage liability ordinarily provide a proper evidential basis for finding some beneficial ownership. One joint owner is not automatically compelled to sell merely because another wishes to do so.

These conjoined appeals concerned county court decisions setting aside two local housing authorities’ findings of intentional homelessness under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996.

In William, Wandsworth concluded that the applicant deliberately failed to pay his mortgage after diverting available funds to other purposes. The county court quashed the review decision because it considered the authority’s identification of the relevant deliberate act ambiguous.

In Bellamy, Hounslow found that an applicant who was a joint registered owner and joint mortgagor had a beneficial interest in her home and deliberately became homeless by consenting to its sale. The county court held that conclusion obviously perverse and varied the decision to declare that she was not intentionally homeless.

The central questions were whether either review decision disclosed an error of law and whether the county courts had impermissibly substituted their own factual assessments for those of the housing authorities.

1. Both appeals allowed. The county court orders were set aside and the authorities’ review decisions restored. Chadwick LJ delivered the leading judgment. Sedley LJ and Arden LJ agreed.

2. An appeal under section 204 of the Housing Act 1996 is akin to judicial review. All ordinary public-law grounds are available, but the court must respect the fact-finding role entrusted to the housing authority. Where the complaint concerns the authority’s construction of established facts, intervention requires obvious perversity. The court must ask whether the authority’s conclusion was open to it, not whether the court would itself have reached that conclusion.

3. In William, the review letter, read as a whole and in its known factual context, clearly identified the relevant deliberate act. It was the applicant’s failure to make mortgage payments after choosing to divert available borrowed funds to other debts and a speculative inheritance. The authority also adequately explained why that failure was deliberate rather than forced upon him by circumstances beyond his control. The county court therefore erred in finding ambiguity.

4. In Bellamy, the county court was wrong to hold that one joint owner was legally compelled to concur in a sale whenever the other owner wished to sell. Under sections 14 and 15 of the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996, the court has discretion whether to order trustees to concur in a sale and must consider the specified circumstances. Hounslow could therefore regard continued occupation and opposition to a proposed sale as reasonable.

5. The transfer into joint names, coupled with joint liability for the mortgage, was significant evidence from which the authority could infer that the applicant had a beneficial interest. The mother’s statements supplied further evidence. Whether that inference was ultimately correct in contested property litigation was immaterial; it was not obviously perverse.

6. An applicant challenging a review decision should place before the county court all grounds relied upon. It was inappropriate to introduce new fact-sensitive grounds by a late respondent’s notice in a second appeal.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Allowed both authorities’ appeals, set aside the county court orders and restored the review decisions finding intentional homelessness. The later review decision in William was consequently of no effect.
2. Wandsworth County Court: Allowed William’s appeal under section 204 of the Housing Act 1996 and quashed Wandsworth’s review decision of 20 April 2005.
3. Brentford County Court: Allowed Bellamy’s appeal and varied Hounslow’s review decision of 15 November 2004 by declaring that she had not become homeless intentionally.