Social Landlord Ordered to Pay Substantial Damages to Disabled Tenant

25/01/2022


In a landmark disability discrimination case, a social housing provider who took the disproportionate step of seeking an anti-social behaviour injunction against a vulnerable tenant was ordered to pay her substantial damages.

The provider launched proceedings against the tenant, who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), after receiving a deluge of complaints from neighbours concerning her behaviour. It relied on six alleged incidents of anti-social behaviour, ranging from verbal abuse to the taking of intrusive photographs.

In refusing to grant the injunction sought, a judge found that five of the allegations were simply not made out on the evidence. He accepted that, for a brief period, the tenant had caused a noise nuisance. However, that incident was almost two years in the past and there was little prospect of the conduct being repeated.

The judge noted that the tenant’s obsessive filming of the world around her had led to complaints of intrusion into privacy. That and other behaviours were, however, manifestations of her disability and not all of her neighbours had proved able to respond to her conduct sympathetically or with tolerance.

In upholding the tenant’s disability discrimination counterclaim, the judge found that the provider had come nowhere near to establishing that its response to the tension that developed in the neighbourhood as a consequence of her disability was proportionate. It should have been obvious to the provider that her condition would need to be accommodated with reason and understanding by her neighbours.

Specialist expertise was needed to address the situation and the provider should have done much more to ensure that staff dealing with the matter were familiar with the symptoms of OCD. The provider’s pursuit of an injunction against the tenant was not a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. It had persisted in seeing her as a perpetrator, rather than a victim, and had failed to protect her from the anti-social conduct of others.

The judge noted that the outcome of the case represented a forensic disaster for the provider. Any reader of the judgment would find it extraordinary that the injunction application was pursued to trial by a responsible social landlord. The proceedings had seriously injured the tenant’s feelings and should never have been brought. The provider was ordered to pay her £27,500 in damages.

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