Southwark Law Centre has secured an important High Court win in a case that could strengthen protections for disabled people placed in temporary accommodation away from their support networks.
Our client became homeless following a stroke which left him with significant care and support needs. Because he relied on carers and family members living in Lambeth, the council accepted that he needed accommodation in the borough or nearby.
Despite this, after a lengthy delay and repeated failures by Lambeth Council to provide suitable accommodation, he was placed outside the borough, away from the support network he depended on. After numerous complaints failed to resolve the situation, legal proceedings were issued.
The case raises an issue affecting many disabled homeless people in London. Faced with severe shortages of temporary accommodation, councils frequently place households outside their home boroughs. While this can be disruptive for anyone, it can be particularly damaging for disabled people who rely on carers, family support, specialist healthcare services and local community networks.
We argued that Lambeth Council had failed to make reasonable adjustments for our client’s disability. Although the council later provided him with a permanent council tenancy after legal proceedings were started, the discrimination claim continued through the courts.
The High Court has now ruled that local authorities cannot simply point to policies and procedures designed to support disabled people. Where there is evidence that those arrangements may not be working, authorities must be able to demonstrate that their systems are operating effectively in practice.
The Court found that Lambeth had not provided sufficient evidence about how its arrangements for moving disabled applicants into suitable accommodation actually worked, or why so many failures had occurred in our client’s case. The matter will now return to the County Court for reconsideration.
While the litigation is ongoing, the judgment is significant. It confirms that individual cases can provide evidence of wider systemic problems and that public authorities may be required to justify the effectiveness of the adjustments they have in place for disabled people.
The case is also an important reminder that homelessness decisions can engage both housing law and disability discrimination law. Alongside challenging unsuitable accommodation through the homelessness system, disabled applicants may also have rights under the Equality Act where policies or practices place them at a particular disadvantage.
Southwark Law Centre acted for the client in the High Court appeal after the closure of Centre 70, which represented him in the earlier stages of the case. The appeal was conducted by Southwark Law Centre housing solicitor Oscar Leyens, with counsel Nick Bano of Garden Court Chambers.
Oscar Leyens, Housing Solicitor at Southwark Law Centre, said:
‘This case shows where public bodies are challenged for their failure to provide suitable accommodation to disabled people, claimants would be well-advised to consider whether they may have a private law claim under the Equality Act 2010.
The judgement serves as an authority that where prima facie discrimination is established, it is not enough for authorities to sit on their hands and dismiss the incident as a one-off or exceptional failure. Individual failures require cogent explanations supported by evidence, and in absence of such, the Courts are entitled to find unlawful discrimination has occurred.
The failures by Lambeth in Mr Asiimwe’s case left him in awful situations without the support of his carers. Unfortunately, these types of mistakes are too common, and the case comes in a line of authorities that show Lambeth’s homelessness services are in crisis, leading to both unlawful and very poor service provision to homeless applicants. Lambeth should properly explain themselves and be held to account for that.’
The judgment sends a clear message that councils and other public authorities must be able to demonstrate that their arrangements for supporting disabled people are effective in practice, not merely in theory. No one should lose access to the care and support they depend on because they have become homeless, and we will continue to fight for a system that recognises and protects the rights of disabled people.