Home Office ordered to provide adequate asylum accommodation to mother and severely disabled child following successful judicial review

In a judgment handed down on 18 December 2024, the High Court declared that the Secretary of State for the Home Department (‘SSHD’) breached her duty to provide adequate asylum accommodation under sections 95 and 96 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. The High Court granted a mandatory order requiring the Claimants (C1 and C2) to be moved to adequate accommodation that would meet the needs of the C2, a severely disabled child.

This is a significant judgment as it is the first time that the High Court has considered in detail the criteria for granting a mandatory order, set out by the Supreme Court in R (Imam) v Croydon London Borough Council [2023] UKSC 45; [2023] 3 WLR 1178, in the context of asylum support accommodation.

The claim was brought by two Claimants. C1 is the mother of C2. C1 is as an asylum seeker and C2 is her severely disabled 5-year-old child. He experiences frequent seizures, in the region of 7-10 times a day, and is fed by a PEG-J feeding tube. C1 cares for C2 who requires close supervision and full adult support for transfers, positioning and daily life activities. The Claimants live in a hotel room provided by the Defendant. The Claimants challenged the inadequacy of that accommodation. The Defendant conceded that the accommodation was inadequate but argued that it was “impossible” to comply with the mandatory order sought by the Claimants.

The Claimants’ claim for judicial review succeeded. The Court stated that it had been “left in no doubt” (§52) about the need to grant a mandatory order and that the Defendant had failed to establish impossibility.

The SSHD’s evidence in this claim revealed that their provider, Clearsprings Ready Homes (‘CRH’), only had fourteen wheelchair accessible properties in London, of that twelve required further adaptations to be made suitable for C2, and only one in the London Borough of Southwark.

The following observations by the Court are likely to be of more general application at §54:

1. The searches of the Claimants’ solicitors for potentially suitable properties on the private rental market substantially undermined the Defendant’s poorly evidenced assertion that procuring such a property would be impossible.
2. The inadequacies of the SSHD’s chosen subcontractors (in this case, CRH) including their lack of appropriately adapted housing stock was “not a reason not to make an order”.
3. Significantly, the Court clarified what was meant by ‘resources’ in Iman, noting that in the asylum accommodation context it “is important not to elide resources in the sense of financial resources with resources in the sense of housing stock that CRH avails itself of. I add that there is no evidence before me from anyone at CRH to support the impossibility submission.”
4. The Court looked at the wider context of the SSHD’s systemic failures to provide adequate asylum accommodation. The Court noted that “this claim is not an isolated incident or an outlier. Examples of authorities where the Administrative Court have made observations that are critical of the approach taken by the Defendant indicative of systemic problems and which are relevant to this claim include R (NS) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 2675 (Admin) and R (oao DXK) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department Defendant Migrant Helpline Limited (t/a ‘Migrant Help’) (A Charity) and Clearsprings Ready Homes Limited [2024] EWHC 579 (Admin). If there are systemic shortcomings in the Defendant complying with section 95 and 96 of the IAA then that is a reason to make a mandatory order providing it is not impossible to comply with its terms. It is certainly not a reason not to make a mandatory order.” The SSHD’s wider failings therefore weighed in favour of the Court granting a mandatory order.

As with other post-Imam cases, the High Court was clear that the burden was squarely on the Defendant to establish that it would be impossible to comply with a mandatory order. In this case, the SSHD had not “got close to persuading” (§54) the Court that it would be impossible to provide adequate asylum accommodation to the Claimants.

The successful Claimants were represented by Ollie Persey, of the Garden Court Chambers Public Law and Community Care Teams, instructed by Chessie Aeron-Thomas of Coram Children’s Legal Centre, assisted by Madey Doku.

Please click here to read the judgment in full.