Housing law

Allocation scheme

The amendments to allocation of accommodation under part 6 of the Housing Act 1996 made by the Homelessness Act 2002 are to come into force in January 2003.

These implement ideas contained in the government's Green Paper Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All.

Ironically, one authority's early attempt at 'choice-based' allocation has been declared unlawful.

The Court of Appeal heard together two appeals by the authority against successful challenges to its allocation scheme - Lambeth LBC v A and Lambeth LBC v Lindsay [2002] EWCA Civ 1084.

In essence, the authority's scheme was divided into seven groups, A to G.

However, these groups did not mirror the categories of reasonable or additional preference under section 167 of the 1996 Act.

In A, the applicant had been referred to the authority's housing register by its social services department and was placed into group F (referrals).

Under the 1996 Act, she was entitled to both a reasonable and an additional preference.

Under the allocation scheme, the only assessment of need made by the authority was (a) deciding in which group to place the applicant and (b) setting upper and lower limits on the size and type of property for which she qualified and any areas of the borough in which she should not be offered a property.

In Lindsay, the applicant was placed in group D, which included all 'mainstream' applicants.

Again, under the scheme, the authority made the same assessments as in the case of group F applicants.

However, in addition, applicants in group D had rights of 'self-assessment'.

This meant that they could decide for themselves how many areas of the borough they were prepared to live in and, within the limits set by the authority, the size and type of property they were prepared to accept.

In Lindsay, the authority emphasised the desirability of self-assessment as a means of assessing housing need.

Applicants were said to be in a better position than the authority to assess their own needs and would tailor the type of offer they were prepared to accept to the urgency of their need.

Moreover, the conferring of choice on applicants was a feature of current government policy.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.

In approving R v Islington LBC, ex p Reilly and Mannix (1998) 31 HLR 651, QBD, the court held that an allocation scheme must provide a composite assessment of an applicant's housing need.

Numerous criticisms were made of the details of the scheme but the judgment is most interesting on the idea of self-assessment.

The court held that self-assessment is not a meaningful way of assessing an applicant's needs in an area where housing stock is in short supply.

It enables an applicant to move up the waiting above those with greater needs without any reference to reasonably objective criteria.

Those in greater need may well not be able to benefit from self-assessment because they may not be in a position to accept less suitable properties.

As Mr Justice Collins observed in paragraph 13 of his judgment: 'A realisation that what would otherwise be regarded as substandard accommodation in an unwanted area can be the only way of avoiding an unacceptably long wait is hardly what most would regard as a real choice.

It is not the sort of choice which the Green Paper seems to me to be advocating.'

By Andrew Dymond, barrister, Arden Chambers, London