SOCIAL SECURITY

Housing benefit applicant sharing kitchen and living room with brother not necessarily residing with brotherR v Brent London Borough Council Housing Benefit Review Board, Ex parte Kadhim: CA (Schiemann and Buxton LJJ and Jacob J): 20 December 2000The applicant lived in the same house as his landlord, who was his brother, paying extra for use of the kitchen.

The Housing Benefit (General) Regulations 1987, regulation 7(1) effectively disentitled a person who resided with a close relative from claiming housing benefit.

For the purposes of regulation 7, regulation 3(4) provided that a person resides with another only if they share any accommodation other than a bathroom, lavatory or communal area.

The housing benefit review board found that because the applicant had the use of the kitchen and living room, he was to be treated as residing with his landlord, who was a close relative.

Mr Justice Munby considered that he was bound by the Court of Appeal authority to hold that the board was precluded from finding that a person who shared accommodation with his brother, including a kitchen, was not residing with a close relative.

Simon Cox (JR Jones, Ealing) for the applicant.

The review board did not appear and was not represented.Held, allowing the appeal, that the term resides with was made up of ordinary English words, and had to be given its ordinary meaning; that the words only if in regulation 3(4) indicated that sharing any accommodation other than a bathroom, lavatory or communal area was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a finding of residence; that, since the Court of Appeal in an earlier case had assumed that regulation 3(4) provided a complete test of residence for the purpose of the regulations but that assumption had not been argued, that decision did not bind the board or the court in the present case; and that, accordingly, the matter would be remitted to the review board for further consideration.