HOUSING
Housing benefit - determina-tion of local reference rent - 'locality' signifying area no greater than necessary to enable reliable calculations and judgments to be madeR (Saadat and others) v The Rent Service: CA (Lords Justice Kennedy, Mummery and Sedley): 26 October 2001The tenants of certain small houses in the Stockport area were eligible for housing benefit.
In setting the local reference rent in accordance with the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Order 1997 (SI 1997 No 1984), for the purpose of determining the amounts of benefit to be awarded, rent officers took the whole of the administrative area of Stockport as being the relevant 'locality'.The tenants sought judicial review, claiming that the rent officers erred in law in not setting the local reference rent by taking a smaller, more limited area.
The judge refused the applications.
The tenants appealed.Jan Luba QC and Adam Fullwood (instructed by Thrasher Walker Partnership, Stockport) for the tenants.
Guy Fetherstonhaugh (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for The Rent Service.Held, allowing the appeal, that for the purpose of quantifying payments, rent officers in setting the local reference rent had to construe 'locality' as signifying an area no greater than would enable them to make the specified calculations and judgments depending on the character of the area in which the dwelling was located; and that it offended the purpose of the legislation to limit the amount of benefit by taking as the locality an area so large that poorer dwellings in it would bring the median down and drive out or pauperise eligible claimants.
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