Housing group wins appeal to seek eviction of Luton cheat who lied about £70k income to get house

Luton Community Housing (LCH) has won an appeal to seek eviction of a cheat who lied about her family's income to get a home ahead of others on the housing waiting list.
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Ex-council worker Nargish Durdana applied for housing assistance in March 2013, falsely claiming that she, her husband and two young children were living at her parents' house in Maidenhall Road and needed to leave because of overcrowding, with just £1,000 in the bank.

Based upon Ms Durdana's lies, LCH granted her a tenancy at Griggs Gardens, Farley Hill, on August 5, 2013, where she has continued to live ever since.

In fact, at the time that Ms Durdana sought help, she and her family were living in a ground floor flat at Dunstable Road under an assured shorthold tenancy and her husband had another bank account into which he had been paying a second income.

The property at Griggs GardensThe property at Griggs Gardens
The property at Griggs Gardens

The combined annual income of their household amounted to £70,734 and the credit balance in one of Ms Durdana's accounts was more than £6,000.

The fraud came to light in March 2017 and Durdana accepted a caution in relation to three offences of dishonesty. Her husband pleaded guilty at Luton Crown Court to the offence of providing false information in order to obtain housing.

Both were sacked from their jobs at Luton Borough Council and in May 2017, LCH served a notice seeking repossession on the grounds that Ms Durdana lied in her statements seeking housing support.

But at Clerkenwell and Shoreditch County Court in 2018, Ms Durdana claimed that it was unreasonable to make an order for repossession as it would have a negative impact on both her and her youngest child, who has cerebral palsy. Ms Durdana has a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) associated with the child's birth.

Although the judge accepted that Ms Durdana had made multiple false statements, she agreed with the defence that LCH was in breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty (“PSED”) - a duty under the Equality Act to assess the needs of a tenant before seeking repossession. For this reason the claim, she held, must be dismissed.

At the Court of Appeal this week, the county court's judgment was thrown out and LCH won its case to seek repossession of the property at Griggs Court.

In his judgment, Lord Justice Patten stated: "I agree that the judge has misdirected herself and we must therefore decide whether, on the facts of this case, it is highly likely that a proper PSED assessment would have not led to a different decision.

"Housing authorities operate under severe constraints in terms of available accommodation.

"There is no question that had the respondent and her husband provided honest answers to the questions in the application form, they would not have been granted this tenancy.

"The premises would have been allocated to other qualifying applicants of whom there were and are many.

"The respondent could have afforded to have rented accommodation in the private sector and should have done so.

"In the face of a continuing shortage of public housing, LCH is justified in operating a policy of seeking to remove tenants who have obtained their accommodation by deception. The duties owed to other homeless applicants support and justify that policy.

"This was not a case where the medical evidence suggested that the impact of eviction on [Ms Durdana and her child] as disabled persons would have been either acute or disproportionate.

"Even after paying due regard to these disabilities LCH could lawfully have decided to continue with the claim for possession and are highly likely to have done so. For these reasons, I would allow the appeal against the judge’s order dismissing the claim.

"I would therefore allow the appeal but remit the claim back to the judge to decide whether it is reasonable to make the order for possession."

The case will now be referred back to the trial judge to decide upon repossession.