Blog post by Georgie Rea of the Garden Court Community Care Law Team.
Georgie Rea of the Garden Court Community Care Law Team secures significant victory for a severely disabled claimant of Universal Credit (UC) on the basis of Article 1 Protocol 1 and Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). Through Advocate, Georgie has been acting pro bono in this case since 2022; after an initial refusal of the Appeal by the First Tier Tribunal (FtT) (Social Security and Child Support), she appealed to the Upper Tribunal (UT), who, allowing the appeal, remitted the case back for a further hearing. The FtT found that the operation of the Universal Credit (UC) regulations had resulted in unlawful discrimination against the Appellant, necessitating the disapplication of the offending provisions.
The Appellant migrated from legacy benefits (including he had previously severe disability premium as part of income-related employment and support allowance) to UC in 2021.[1] He was a restricted mental health patient requiring 24-hour supported accommodation. However, his accommodation did not count as “specified accommodation” under paragraph 3A(3) of Schedule 1 to the Universal Credit Regulations 2013, as it was managed by a private provider, not a “relevant body” (such as a housing association), meaning his rent was met by the Housing Costs Element of UC, rather than Housing Benefits (HB). He therefore faced a £90 reduction in his transitional element, after a rent increase triggered regulation 55 of the UC (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2014.
In his appeal, Georgie argued that this erosion was discriminatory because it treated the claimant less favourably than analogous individuals, such as those in specified accommodation funded by HB, whose transitional protection remains intact despite rent increases. The Secretary of State failed to provide objective justification for this differential treatment, breaching the “very weighty reasons” standard for discrimination against disabled people as one of the “suspect” grounds (see SC v SSWP [2021] UKSC 26).
The FtT, guided by precedents in R (TP and AR) v SSWP [2018] EWHC 1474and SSWP v JA (UC) [2024] UKUT 52, found the erosion unlawful. It held that the claimant’s status, linked to his disability and housing needs, fell within A1P1’s ambit. The Tribunal disapplied Regulation 55 and ordered recalculation of UC entitlement without the £90 reduction, backdated to the original erosion date in January 2021. This decision reinforces principles from TP and AR and JA, confirming that transitional protection mechanisms cannot arbitrarily penalise disabled claimants due to the status of their landlord. The decision underscores that welfare policy must respect human rights and that, in accordance with RR v SSWP [2019] UKSC 52, the Tribunal is willing to, and indeed must, exercise its power to disapply the relevant regulations which would otherwise result in incompetently with the ECHR.
[1] See Shelter’s useful summary of Transitional protection for universal credit claimants here.
