AC-2025-LON-000933 - [2025] EWHC 2745 (Admin)

In this case, the Claimant challenges the manner in which the Council designated her under the 2022 scheme. The Claimant has resided at 73 Glenfarg Road, London SE6 1XN since 15 June 2017 with her adult daughter. The accommodation, which is rented from a private sector landlord, is a one-bedroom flat on the third floor of a converted house and has one bathroom and one kitchen. The property is described as very small; it has no living room, and the Claimant and her daughter have to share a bed. The Council now accepts the accommodation is statutorily overcrowded.

On 10 May 2021, the Claimant applied for an allocation of social housing, and the application was governed by the allocation scheme then in force. She was placed in the then Band 3, reflecting the fact that her accommodation was overcrowded by one bedroom. She was given a Band date of 10 May 2021.

On the coming into force of the 2022 scheme, the Claimant, as someone who was overcrowded in settled accommodation and who required one additional bedroom, was automatically placed into the new Band 4, indicating the lowest level of housing need. Her original Band 3 date of 10 May 2021 was “retained at this point” (paragraph 30 of the statement of Nina Morris dated 17 July 2025). As set out above, she was informed that she could apply to be placed in the new Band 3 “if you require one additional room and you think you are statutorily overcrowded”. Accordingly, she challenged this determination by way of submitting a change of circumstances form on 27 December 2022.

On 3 May 2023 the Claimant was informed, via a 1^st stage verification notice, that she had been awarded Band 4, with a priority list date of 10 May 2021. On 12 May 2023, HASL wrote on her behalf to the housing allocations reviews team at the Council, seeking a review of that decision and providing measurements of the accommodation. On 10 July 2023 a Housing Register Assessment and Allocations Officer responded, stating that, since the Claimant lived in a two-person household in accommodation consisting of two rooms, a bedroom and a living room, she did not qualify for statutory overcrowding.

HASL informed the Council that it had been mistaken, as the accommodation consisted in fact only of a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom. Photos of the accommodation were sent on 18 July 2023, and, on 21 July 2023, the Council awarded the Claimant statutory overcrowding. This meant that she was entitled to be in Band 3, although the email did not expressly state as such.

In September 2024 the Claimant was, however, rejected for a property on which she had successfully bid because, she was informed, she has been “wrongly” placed in Band 3. HASL again complained to the Council on her behalf.

On 21 October 2024, the Council informed the Claimant that although she had indeed been designated as Band 3 by a housing officer (who had since left the Council), this uplift in band had been “incorrect” and would be “amended to” Band 4 (overcrowded by one, but not statutorily overcrowded), on account of the fact that, as the Council understood it, the Council had never received evidence demonstrating that the accommodation did not have a separate living room (from the bedroom). The Council also stated that the landlord, whom it had contacted, had claimed that there was a separate ‘large’ living room. The letter of 21 October 2024 further stated that, in July 2023, the Band date should have been recorded by the housing officer as 27 December 2022, and not 10 May 2021, as the former date was the correct date on the premise that she had, at that stage, been moved into Band 3.

The Claimant challenged this decision on 3 November 2024, and advanced further representations on 7 November 2024 as to why she should be in Band 3 and why the Band date should have been 10 May 2021 after all. The Council responded on 9 December 2024, confirming that it accepted that she was statutorily overcrowded and that she would be placed in Band 3. However, as someone who had been moved into Band 3, the Band date was correctly that of 27 December 2022. Were she to have remained in Band 4, the Band date would have remained 10 May 2021.

Further pre-action correspondence resulted in the Council exercising its discretion on 11 February 2025 by bringing forward the Band date to 31 October 2022, a benefit of some two months, in recognition of the initial error concerning the banding priority and on account of the Claimant’s language and digital literacy barriers, which may have contributed to her delay in submitting the change of circumstances form.

The Claimant therefore now challenges the Defendant’s refusal, contained in the letter dated 9 December 2024, not to allow her to be prioritised on the housing register with a Band date of 10 May 2021 (as opposed to 31 October 2022).

The Claimant describes in her statement how difficult she and her daughter find living in such cramped and overcrowded conditions, but that their current property is the most that they can afford at present. The living situation means that neither the Claimant nor her daughter have any privacy and they often get into arguments with each other. There has also been considerable impact on their social lives and their health, particularly their sleep.

She asserts that the time frame imposed on her means she will have to wait at least another 3.5 years to bid successfully, unless her priority is backdated to when she first entered Band 3, which was 10 May 2021. She further points to screenshots taken from the Council’s bidding system, which she believes shows that “many of the people who were successful at bidding, and who were in Band 3, had Band dates before October 2022” and that “people with a Band date which is similar to my original Band date of 10 May 2021, are now also successful at getting properties.”

Ms Morris’ evidence is that, in fact:

“45.

When preparing a response to this claim, I conducted a data check and have identified 7 cases that have the statutory overcrowding priority with a Band date prior to 31 October 2022.

46.

I identified that these cases by running report on the Locata IT system for applicants who has overcrowding as part of their ‘Rehousing Reason’ and those with a Band date which pre-dated the implementation of the policy (31 October 2022).

47.

The 7 cases have now been reassessed and their priority band and Band date amended to reflect Lewisham Housing Allocation Policy 2022. We have exhibited a table reflecting the position and changes to the banding and/or date for these 7 cases [Exhibit NM/08].

48.

Two of these were transferring social housing tenants who were correctly placed in Band 4, but the Rehousing Reason was recorded as statutory overcrowding, rather than overcrowded by 1 bedroom.

49.

The other five were in Band 3, but the Band date was incorrect, these applicants have had their Band dates amended to 31 October 2022.”

On 27 February 2025 the Council emailed the Claimant’s solicitor to inform her that the minimum waiting time for Band 3 applicants with a 2-bedroom need is 6 years.