Regina (G) v Southwark London Borough Council; [2009] UKHL 26; [2009] WLR (D) 159

Children — Children in need — Welfare services — Claimant aged 17 excluded from family home applying to local children’s services authority for accommodation — Authority determining that claimant needed “help with accommodation” but did not “require accommodation” — Claimant referred to homeless persons unit and provided with accommodation under housing powers — Whether children’s services authority’s decision lawful — Children Act 1989, s 20(1)

Regina (G) v Southwark London Borough Council;

[2009] UKHL 26; [2009] WLR (D) 159

HL(E): Lord Hope of Craighead, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Mance, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury: 20 May 2009

When a child aged 16 or 17 who had been excluded from his family home applied to the children’s service department of the local authority for accommodation under s 20 of the Children Act 1989, and he satisfied all the requirements of s 20(1), it was not open to the authority to refer the child to the local housing authority for accommodation as a homeless person under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996.

The House of Lords so held, allowing the claimant’s appeal from a decision of the Court of Appeal (Pill and Longmore LJJ, Rix LJ dissenting) ([2009] 1 WLR 34) on 29 July 2008 allowing the claimant’s appeal from a decision of Simon J on 15 November 2007 refusing the claimant permission to seek judicial review, but dismissing his claim for judicial review of the decision of Southwark London Borough Council, on his application for accommodation under s 20 of the 1989 Act, not to provide him with accommodation under the 1989 Act and instead to refer him to the homeless persons unit for accommodation under Part VII of the 1996 Act.

BARONESS HALE OF RICHMOND said that a child, even one on the verge of adulthood, was considered and treated by Parliament as a vulnerable person to whom the state, in the form of the relevant local authority, owed a duty which went wider than the mere provision of accommodation. The claimant was born in 1990 and left school in 2006. Relations with his mother deteriorated in 2007 and she excluded him from home. He presented himself to the local children’s services department requesting accommodation under s 20 of the 1989 Act. The authority completed an assessment and concluded that since the claimant was not in full time education, accommodation provided by the homeless persons unit and referrals to other support agencies would be sufficient. On the facts of the claimant’s case all the requirements of s 20(1) were met and the authority’s duty under s 20 had arisen. The authority were not allowed to sidestep that duty by giving the accommodation a different name. S 27 of the 1989 Act empowered a children’s authority to ask other authorities, including any local housing authority for “help in the exercise of any of their functions” under Part III. That did not mean the children’s authority could avoid their responsibilities by “passing the buck” to another authority; rather they could ask another authority to use its powers to help them discharge theirs. They could ask a housing authority, for example, to make a certain amount of suitable accommodation available to them to use in discharging their responsibility to accommodate children under s 20.

LORD HOPE, LORD WALKER and LORD MANCE agreed and LORD NEUBERGER delivered a speech agreeing with Baroness Hale.

Appearances: Ian Wise and Azeem Suterwalla (instructed by Fisher Meredith) for the claimant; Bryan McGuire and Peggy Etiebet (instructed by Head of Legal Services, Southwark London Borough Council) for the local authority; Steven Kovats (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) by written submissions only for the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

Reported by: Shirani Herbert, barrister