TG, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Lambeth

Accommodation makes a child “looked after” only where the local authority provides it in the exercise of social services functions. The relevant question is the function actually being exercised when accommodation is arranged, not a later characterisation of what should have happened.

Where a youth offending team officer identifies accommodation needs but refers the young person to the housing department, that peripheral involvement does not engage the children’s social services function. The duty is triggered only when the case comes to the attention of the authority’s children’s social services division in the ordinary course. Accommodation provided by the housing department under section 188 of the Housing Act 1996 does not thereby become accommodation under section 20 of the Children Act 1989.

The claimant, aged 16, was referred by a youth offending team social worker to the defendant’s housing department after difficulties at home. He was provided with temporary accommodation under the housing department’s arrangements and remained there for more than 13 weeks.

He sought judicial review, claiming that the accommodation had been provided under section 20 of the Children Act 1989. If so, he would have been a “looked after child” and later a “former relevant child”, potentially qualifying for leaving-care support under section 23C.

The issue was whether the defendant was exercising social services functions when the youth offending team made its report and the housing department provided accommodation.

1. The claim was dismissed. The claimant was not a “former relevant child” because he had not been “looked after” by the defendant within section 22 of the Children Act 1989.
2. Section 22 requires accommodation to have been provided by the authority in the exercise of social services functions. The claimant was never formally in the defendant’s care. The question was therefore whether the accommodation had been provided under the section 20 duty rather than under the housing legislation.
3. The court applied the approach in R (M) v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC [2008] 1 WLR 535. The essence of that decision was that the relevant duty arises when the necessary facts come to the attention of those charged with children’s social services. It is insufficient that a different department, or an officer outside that service, ought to have referred the matter.
4. The youth offending team’s statutory and practical functions remained directed principally to working with court-sentenced offenders and reducing offending. The fact that its officer was a qualified social worker, that the team was placed under the Director of Children’s Services, and that it had links with children’s services did not convert its intervention into the exercise of social services functions.
5. Section 10(6)(a) of the Children Act 2004 did not create an independent youth offending team function to provide accommodation for children. In any event, a function under section 10 was not among the functions treated as social services functions for section 22 purposes.
6. The case was an “M type” case, rather than a “G type” case. As in R (G) v Southwark LBC [2009] 1 WLR 1299, the housing department had provided the accommodation, but here the claimant’s needs had never been brought to the children’s social services team. The housing department’s ability to provide interim accommodation under section 188 of the Housing Act 1996 did not establish that section 20 had been engaged.

First-instance judicial review claim. No prior appellate decision is stated in the judgment.