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Desert island judgments: R (AK) v Westminster City Council
Helen Mowatt on a recent case that gives women fleeing their homes to escape domestic violence greater rights to be rehoused in secure alternative accommodation.
At Public Interest Law Centre, we work with front-line organisations supporting survivors of domestic abuse and it has always been a battle to ensure that they do not lose their security of tenure when fleeing abusive homes.
Local authority housing officers routinely wrongly advise survivors that their only option is to give up social tenancies and present as homeless, after which they will be placed in temporary accommodation. In our experience, temporary accommodation is often substandard and, in many cases, uninhabitable and dangerous. Survivors are forced to choose between remaining in abusive homes or losing their right to a secure, permanent place to live.
Most local authorities allow survivors to apply to transfer to alternative permanent accommodation within the same borough, in a process that preserves their secure tenancy status. The problem comes when survivors need to move out of the borough to stay safe.
We have been training organisations on how to request cross-borough transfers for years. Where transfers are refused, we have advocated on behalf of survivors, but any legal cases have settled before making it to court. Until
R (AK) v Westminster City Council [2024] EWHC 769 (Admin); May 2024
Legal Action 44, there was no precedent establishing local authorities’ duties to enter into reciprocal agreements with each other so that survivors can move further afield and still retain their secure tenancy status.
AK has changed that.
About the case
AK, who had previously had periods of homelessness, held a social tenancy in a borough bordering Westminster. Her child had been subjected to sexual abuse by a neighbour, causing immense trauma, leading to drug use, suicidal ideation and self-harm. The abuser still lived next door to AK and she had been trying to secure alternative accommodation since 2021. During this time, AK’s child had been sent abroad with a relative to keep her safe.
AK had lived in Westminster for six years previously and had a good support network in the borough. Her request to Westminster for a reciprocal transfer under its allocation scheme was refused on the basis it would allow AK to ‘queue jump’.
We argued on AK’s behalf that the council’s policy was unlawful as it:
1discriminated indirectly against women, contrary to Equality Act (EA) 2010 ss19 and 29;
2did not have due regard to, and therefore breached, the public sector equality duty (PSED) in EA 2010 s149; and
We also argued that the council breached its duty under Children Act (CA) 2004 s11 by failing to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the interests of her child.
The council’s reciprocal transfer policy was held to be indirectly discriminatory. It made it more difficult for applicants moving between boroughs to obtain a transfer and women were more likely than men to need to make such moves due to violence. The policy therefore disadvantaged women.
Westminster failed to provide any evidence that it had considered the impact of the policy on women and was found not to have complied with the PSED. It provided no evidence to justify the difference in treatment.
The council’s decision also breached CA 2004 s11 because it failed to consider the impact on AK’s child.
The
AK ruling is all the more crucial for those advocating for survivors following the closure in September 2024 of
Pan London Housing Reciprocal (PLHR), a scheme bringing housing authorities together on a voluntary basis to facilitate cross-borough transfers for abuse survivors.
Key points from AK
•Social tenants who are forced to flee abuse should not have to give up their security of tenure.
•It is important that survivors, front-line organisations and lawyers know the law in this area when facing hostile housing officers.
•If tenants need to flee to a safe area where their landlord does not have properties, they can request a ‘reciprocal transfer’ of their tenancy to another social landlord.
•Transfer policies that make it harder for applicants fleeing across boroughs to protect their security of tenure are detrimental to women. If that detriment is not justified – as it wasn’t in AK’s case – then the policy and decisions made under it will be unlawful.
•Interim accommodation can be provided by local authorities during the transfer to prevent survivors staying in dangerous accommodation