Victory for Homeless Victim

Samuel O’Flaherty

Mr X, whose details are anonymised to protect his privacy, fled his home country due to severe persecution from the authorities, where he had been imprisoned, tortured and sexually assaulted. He suffered serious Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression as a result.

After a long process of claiming asylum in the UK he was finally granted refugee status. This meant he could apply for homelessness assistance from his local council. This took a while for the Council to respond to. They eventually offered him a small studio flat, made up of a small room with an en suite cubicle. The conditions were cramped and there was insufficient space for a table and chairs. The Council told him that if he didn’t accept it they would close his case and no longer help him.

Mr X therefore accepted the offer, but instructed solicitor Sam O’Flaherty to request a statutory review of the suitability of the flat, under the Legal Help Scheme. In the meantime the Council closed Mr X’s homelessness application because they considered him to be suitably housed.

Osbornes obtained reports from a leading psychiatrist who had been assessing Mr X over the years. The reports demonstrated the triggering impact that the cramped conditions were having on Mr X’s PTSD because of his experiences when he had been imprisoned – ‘the small size of his room acted as a distressing reminder of the conditions in which he was detained and tortured’. The medical evidence showed that the particularly small size of the flat was having a major adverse effect on Mr X’s mental health conditions.

Osbornes submitted representations to the Council setting out why the offer was unsuitable and unlawful. The Council initially replied with a decision that they were still minded to treat the offer as suitable, relying on evidence from their own medical adviser.

Osbornes sent further representations challenging this decision. Mr O’Flaherty argued that the Council was not entitled to prefer the evidence of its medical adviser over the psychiatrist, because the advisor had never met Mr X, he had not been asked to assess the flat and was not as qualified to comment on mental health issues as Mr X’s psychiatrist. The Council had also unlawfully breached discrimination and equality laws in how it had treated Mr X’s disability arising from his mental health conditions.

As a result, Mr X won the statutory review. The Council accepted that the offer had been unsuitable due to its size. They reopened his homelessness application and accepted that they owed him the ‘main housing duty’. The Council have agreed to offer Mr X alternative suitable accommodation.