Nathan Roberts v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

Minimum procedural fairness requires a Universal Credit claimant to be told that a landlord seeks a diversionary managed payment or rent-arrears third-party deduction, and to have an opportunity to make representations before the reduction takes effect.

The requirement applies equally to private and social landlords, and to either type of payment. Post-decision review or mandatory reconsideration is insufficient where the decision may significantly reduce subsistence income, may be based on disputed rent arrears, and may affect the claimant’s housing security. Guidance directing decision-makers that pre-decision representations are unnecessary is unlawful. The court did not find a separate breach of the Tameside duty or Article 1 of Protocol 1.

The claimant received Universal Credit. His social landlord requested both a diversionary managed payment of the housing component and a third-party deduction for rent arrears. The payments were imposed without prior notification or an opportunity to respond. The claimant asserted that the alleged arrears were disputed and that he was leaving the property.

The payments were later reversed and the deductions refunded. The claimant nevertheless pursued judicial review of the policy guidance governing the decision-making process. The issues included whether the claim was academic, whether permission to amend should be granted, whether the process was procedurally unfair, and whether it separately breached the Tameside duty of reasonable enquiry or Article 1 of Protocol 1.

1. Outcome. Permission to apply for judicial review was granted, the claim was allowed, and the policy was declared unlawful. The defendant was ordered to pay the claimant’s costs.
2. The common law duty of procedural fairness required the claimant to be informed of the landlord’s request and given an opportunity to make representations before either payment was made or the Universal Credit reduction took effect. This conclusion applied to diversionary managed payments under CAP regulation 58 and rent-arrears third-party deductions under Schedule 6.
3. The requirement followed from the significant real-world effect of reducing subsistence income or removing the housing component, the recognised possibility that the claimant could provide information relevant to rent liability and housing risk, and the fact that the statutory and policy schemes were designed to protect the claimant rather than provide a rent-collection mechanism for landlords.
4. Post-decision review and mandatory reconsideration could not secure fairness. They could operate after the reduction, after the claimant had suffered its practical consequences, and after a disputed rent position had influenced the decision. The online systems already provided practical means of obtaining pre-decision representations.
5. The reasoning was context-specific. Timson supplied useful principles concerning unlawful policy guidance, procedural fairness, statutory supplementation of procedure and reasonable enquiry, but the present result was not reached by mechanically reading across its analysis.
6. The Tameside challenge failed separately. The decision-making process was not an independently unreasonable enquiry, having regard to the latitude afforded to the Secretary of State. The Article 1 Protocol 1 challenge also failed separately; the process was procedurally unfair but did not independently establish a failure to strike a fair balance.

First-instance judicial review in the Administrative Court. The judgment records no earlier decision in the same litigation.