“I do not accept that you have a local connection to the London Borough of Islington either by way of family, residence or employment. I have considered whether you may have a local connection by way of special circumstance, however I am satisfied that this is not the case.”
“a) I have considered the possibility that you have a local connection with this authority by way of a ‘special circumstance.’ b) I have considered the representations on file regarding your support in Islington. I have further considered that the Code of Guidance states that special circumstances might include the need to be near special medical or support services which are available only in a particular district. c) Your solicitors state that your involvement with the Baobab Centre equates to specialist support as envisaged within the Code of Guidance. d) The Baobab Centre is based in Islington and its services are provided within the borough. However, access to the Baobab Centre and its services is not dependent on living in or near the borough. e) I am further satisfied that the entirety of your engagement with the Centre has been whilst resident outside of Islington. f) I am therefore satisfied that there is no need for you to be near the Baobab Centre to access their services. g) I am further satisfied, that as per the Code of Guidance, there is no evidence of any ‘need to be near special medical or support services which are available only in a particular district.’ h) Your solicitors state that we have misdirected ourselves and should consider whether you have a local connection to the borough because of your need to receive treatment from the centre. i) As above, I am satisfied that I have correctly considered the Code of Guidance in this regard and the evidence on file shows that there is no need to be near support from the Baobab Centre because it is only available in a particular district. … o) Your solicitors state that your online engagement throughout the pandemic was far from appropriate for therapeutic services and that your experience of therapy improved greatly when you were able to access face to face sessions. p) Whilst this may be the case, it does not demonstrate a need to be near the Centre or resident in Islington; you have never been so whilst accessing these services. … z) The evidence on file does not show that you are unable to receive your current treatment, support or engage in your studies if residing outside if Islington; the opposite is confirmed. I am therefore satisfied that there is no evidence of ‘need’ to reside in Islington to be near a specialist support service or other reason. aa) Whilst I am sympathetic to your wish to live closer, I am not satisfied that this a need and can find no special circumstances that require you to live in the borough. bb) Considering all the information provided, I am not satisfied that you have a local connection by way of special circumstance.
“a) I am aware of your previous links with Islington; however, as above, I do not accept that they provide a local connection with the borough, in real terms. b) I have considered the Code of Guidance at 10.14 which states ‘The overriding consideration should always be whether the applicant has a connection ‘in real terms’ with an area and the housing authority must consider the applicant’s individual circumstances, particularly any exceptional circumstances, before reaching a decision.’ c) I have considered whether your individual circumstances mean that you have a connection in ‘real terms’ and for the reasons provided above, even when considering your circumstances as a whole, I do not find this to be the case. d) Having considered special circumstances, I am satisfied that there is no compelling reason that you reside in Islington rather than Barking and Dagenham or Haringey, where you have proven local connections. e) I am further satisfied, having considered your solicitor’s representations, that you have a local connection to Haringey by way of residence, as you have been resident in temporary accommodation in Haringey for at least 6 out of the past 12 months. f) I have therefore upheld the decision that you do not have a local connection to the London Borough of Islington but have varied the decision to refer your application unders198 Housing Act 1996 , so the referral will now be to the London Borough of Haringey rather than to the London Borough of Dagenham and Redbridge.”
“(A1) If the local housing authority would be subject to the duty under section 189B (initial duty owed to all eligible persons who are homeless) but consider that the conditions are met for referral of the case to another local housing authority in England, they may notify that other authority of their opinion. (1) If the local housing authority would be subject to the duty under section 193 (accommodation for those with priority need who are not homeless intentionally) but consider that the conditions are met for referral of the case to another local housing authority, they may notify that other authority of their opinion. (2) The conditions for referral of the case to another authority are met if— (a) neither the applicant nor any person who might reasonably be expected to reside with him has a local connection with the district of the authority to whom his application was made, (b) the applicant or a person who might reasonably be expected to reside with him has a local connection with the district of that other authority, and (c) neither the applicant nor any person who might reasonably be expected to reside with him will run the risk of domestic abuse in that other district. … (5) The question whether the conditions for referral of a case which does not involve a referral to a local housing authority in Wales are satisfied shall be decided by agreement between the notifying authority and the notified authority or, in default of agreement, in accordance with such arrangements as the Secretary of State may direct by order. … (6) An order may direct that the arrangements shall be— (a) those agreed by any relevant authorities or associations of relevant authorities, or (b) in default of such agreement, such arrangements as appear to the Secretary of State … to be suitable, after consultation with such associations representing relevant authorities, and such other persons, as he thinks appropriate ….” (a) neither the applicant nor any person who might reasonably be expected to reside with him has a local connection with the district of the authority to whom his application was made, (b) the applicant or a person who might reasonably be expected to reside with him has a local connection with the district of that other authority, and (c) neither the applicant nor any person who might reasonably be expected to reside with him will run the risk of domestic abuse in that other district. (a) those agreed by any relevant authorities or associations of relevant authorities, or (b) in default of such agreement, such arrangements as appear to the Secretary of State … to be suitable, after consultation with such associations representing relevant authorities, and such other persons, as he thinks appropriate ….”
“a benevolent approach should be adopted to the interpretation of review decisions. The court should not take too technical a view of the language used, or search for inconsistencies, or adopt a nit-picking approach, when confronted with an appeal against a review decision. That is not to say that the court should approve incomprehensible or misguided reasoning, but it should be realistic and practical in its approach to the interpretation of review decisions.”
“The overriding consideration should always be whether the applicant has a connection ‘in real terms’ with an area and the housing authority must consider the applicant’s individual circumstances, particularly any exceptional circumstances, before reaching a decision.”
“Procedures for Referrals of Homeless Applicants to Another Local Authority: Guidelines for Local Authorities on Procedures for Referral” (“the Guidelines”). While stressing in paragraph 1.4 that the Guidelines are “without prejudice to the duty of local authorities to treat each case on its merits and to take into account existing and future case law”, paragraph 4.3 comments on when a “local connection” may be established. Sub-paragraphs (i), (ii) and (iii) consider when residence, employment and family associations may give rise to a “local connection” with a district. This is said in sub-paragraph (iv) about when “special circumstances” establish a “local connection”: “This may be particularly relevant where the applicant has been in prison or hospital and his or her circumstances do not conform to the criteria in (i) – (iii) above. Where, for example, an applicant seeks to return to a district where he or she was brought up or lived for a considerable length of time in the past, there may be grounds for considering that the applicant has a local connection with that district because of special circumstances. An authority must exercise its discretion when considering whether special circumstances apply.”
“What section 18 (1) does is to say that a reference to a person having a local connection with an area is a reference to his having such a connection because he is, or in the past was normally resident there, or because he is employed there, or because he has family associations with that area or because there are special circumstances. Section 18 specifies those factors alone upon which the local connection is to be founded. A local connection not founded upon any of the four stated factors is irrelevant. The fundamental concept of section 5 (1) (a) [which corresponded to section 198(2) of the 1996 Act] is local connection, not any local connection, but a local connection having any of the origins described in section 18 (1). The opinion which has to be formed by a notifying housing authority in a residence case is not whether the homeless person is now or was in the past normally resident in the area of the notifying authority, but whether the applicant has now a local connection with either area based upon the fact that he is now or was in the past normally resident in that area.”
“The fundamental question is the existence of a ‘local connection.’ In construing section 5 it is only to be expected that the emphasis falls on ‘local connection,’ and not on past or present residence or current employment, etc. The Act is one which enables a homeless person in certain circumstances to jump over the heads of all other persons on a housing authority’s waiting list, to jump the queue. One would not expect any just legislation to permit this to be done unless the applicant has in a real sense a local connection with the area in question. I accept that ‘residence’ may be changed in a day, and that in appropriate circumstances a single day’s residence may be enough to enable a person to say that he was normally resident in the area in which he arrived only yesterday. But ‘local connection’ means far more than that. It must be built up and established; by a period of residence; or by a period of employment; or by family associations which have endured in the area; or by other special circumstances which spell out a local connection in real terms.”
“Those listed causes of a local connection emphasise matters that go to having a place in the community: choice, employment, the continuity of support that family associations can give, and all special circumstances which can contribute to such a socially beneficial ‘local connection’.”
“27. As already shown the reviewing officer took into account in his letter whether there had been an essential compassionate, social or support need. The Court of Appeal held that this was a clear misdirection in law. Requiring that the applicant must show an essential compassionate, social or support need to live in the district was putting the test for local connection too high. 28. The appellant authority contends that this was not a separate test but an overall review of all the other matters which had been considered as to whether local connection by reference to special circumstances had been shown and that accordingly there was no misdirection. There is some force in this but it seems to me that the reviewing officer was using this additional test as part of his consideration as to whether there was a local connection by reason of special circumstances. On that basis as I understand it the appellant authority accepts that there was a misdirection as the Court of Appeal held. I agree with the Court of Appeal on this matter.”
“The body which has the primary responsibility for coming to a conclusion as to whether a local connection has been established is the local authority to whom application is made. The statute clearly leaves what in other jurisdictions is often referred to as ‘a margin of appreciation’ to the local authority. When, as here, we are dealing with ‘special circumstances’, with no statutory indication as to what circumstances can be taken into account, how special, and special in what sense they are to be, one can see that the margin of appreciation by the local authority is a very substantial one.”
“I would not rest my decision on the fact that the cousin once removed lived in Kensington and Chelsea, rather than Fulham and Hammersmith to which Mrs Avdic applied. Even after living in this country for two years she could well be forgiven for believing that the Fulham Road where the cousin lived was in the borough of Fulham and Hammersmith instead of being partly in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. But the local authority were entitled to find that there were no special circumstances.”
“The enquiry, in the present case, was whether the applicant had a local connection with Ipswich because of family associations. In the context of that enquiry, as it seems to me, the fact that the welfare of the applicant and his family might be better served by the help and support which would or might be provided by his extended family than by voluntary or statutory agencies had little or no relevance. The relevant question was whether, in the particular circumstances of the individual case, the bond between the applicant and one or more members of the extended family was of such a nature that it would be appropriate to regard those members of the extended family as ‘near relatives’ in the sense in which that concept is recognised in the Referral Guidelines.”