Is a local housing authority, in deciding whether a person is a “ fit and proper person” for the purposes of an application to be a licence holder or manager of a house regulated under the Housing Act 2004, is the authority entitled to take into account a person’s spent conviction and the conduct underlining it? This was the question before the. Our team of Appeal in Hussain v Waltham Forest LBC (2020);EWCA Civ 1539. The Court holds that a LHA’s consideration and determination of a grant, or revocation, of a licence under Part 2, or Part 3, of the Housing Act involves proceedings that under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 give the LHA power to consider a spent conviction under that Act, provided that it is satisfied that justice cannot otherwise be done.

Section 166(4) of the Housing Act 1996 provides that the fact that a person has applied for an allocation of social housing is not to be divulged without their consent to any other member of the public. However, in XXX v Camden LBC (2020) EWCA Civ 1468 the Court of Appeal holds that does not extend to entitlement to anonymity when seeking judicial review of a local authority decision about such an allocation, even when medical information is involved. A balancing exercise of the relevant interests, including open justice, has to be carried out.

In R ( Clark ) v Birmingham City Council (2020);EWCA Civ 1468 the Court of Appeal held that the Council had not acted unlawfully in deciding to incur spending on retrofitting sprinklers in its tower blocks, held under Part 2 of the Housing Act 1985. It did not owe a fiduciary duty to the tenant claimant.

The first instance Judgments in Jones v Southwark and Kingston v Moss, noted in this Bulletin on 3 December 2019, have been upheld by the Court of Appeal: (2020) EWCA Civ 1381. The Councils are resellers within the meaning of the Water Resale Order 2006, Thames Water Utilities having contractually supplied water and sewerage services to the authority, not to its tenants.