Finding suitable accommodation for homeless families with exceptionally high needs can be difficult to say the least. However, as a High Court ruling made plain, local authorities are under an immediate and unqualified duty to rise to the challenge.
The case concerned a single mother who had been diagnosed with, amongst other conditions, autistic spectrum disorder, depression, anxiety and asthma. Two of her three children, aged 14 and 12, were profoundly disabled. The local authority had placed them in interim accommodation that was damp and infested with mice and which it accepted was in several respects unsuitable to meet their needs.
The council accepted that it was in prolonged breach of its duty under the Housing Act 1996 to provide the family with suitable accommodation. Assailed by a national housing crisis and acute budgetary pressures, however, it asserted that it was doing all it reasonably could to meet its legal obligations. The family was at the top of the housing waiting list and the council was confident that it would find them a suitable new home in the near future.
After the mother launched judicial review proceedings, the Court noted that the family had, for 20 months, endured the dire consequences of living in a property that did not meet even a minimum level of suitability. Amongst other things, the mother’s mental health had suffered badly and the children had been unable to leave the house, let alone attend school.
Given the mother’s willingness to be rehoused virtually anywhere in England, the Court was not satisfied that the council had done all it reasonably could to comply with its statutory duty. In those circumstances, the Court took the rare step of issuing a mandatory order against the council, requiring it to secure suitable accommodation for the family within 12 weeks.